150 words of wisdom story

I knew I was terrible at both chemistry and math in high school: I felt both subjects were boring and complicated. But I couldn't get a better score in English, which made me very disappointed because I like this course. I tried to learn English well, but failed, which made my father even more convinced that my true talents might only be revealed when I became a tailor.

I am my parents’ only son, and the one most deserving of inheriting my father’s tailoring shop in Ocean City, New Jersey—a valuable craft inherited from my father’s ancestors from Napoleonic Italy. I spent most of my free time working as a school reporter, and as my grades dropped during my junior year of high school, my father became increasingly insistent that I spend time in his workshop. He made me learn tailoring and how to sew trouser legs and make buttonholes.

He said that being a tailor would at least be an "iron rice bowl" that would allow me to survive, and repeated a wish I had made: "Don't you want to live in Paris after graduating from high school?" Actually, I know. , even when I arrived in Paris, I just stayed in a living room in my uncle’s apartment. My uncle left Italy in 1911 and opened a prosperous tailor shop in Paris. Many celebrities were his customers. I could work as an apprentice there.

However, watching my father work, I felt that being a tailor was boring, time-consuming and very demanding. My father sewed every piece of clothing stitch by stitch, sewing a piece of silk or silk. When sewing woolen clothes, he needs to feel the direction of the needle with his fingers. If he felt the clothes weren't perfect enough, he would take them apart and make them again.

I never wanted to be a tailor, but whenever my father mentioned Paris, I listened respectfully. After I once seriously wrote an essay about Adolf Ochs, the publisher and veteran figure of the New York Times, my father took the trouble to talk about my English scores-my essay later had to be Got a B——.

B——is not the lowest grade the teacher has ever given me. Most of my grades are C, sometimes even D. I even got an F once after misspelling Shakespeare's name in an essay on Hamlet. The female teacher criticized my essays for being too "verbose" and "circumstantial." Sometimes she would write comments to me in red ink: "Grammar! Grammar! Grammar!"

Not available in the United States No tailor could have admired Oakes more than my father. After immigrating to the United States in 1920, my father read the New York Times every day. Reading newspapers expanded his vocabulary with the help of dictionaries. So every time he was disappointed with me because I didn't do well in the English test, I would make excuses by saying I didn't have time to read the newspaper.

Ochs himself began his career without the encouragement of a teacher - he also had mediocre grades in school but revealed his talent later in life.

My parents, I and my sister lived on the top floor of our store. Although the home had a spacious kitchen and dining room, my mother was one of the few Italian-Americans of her generation who did not want to cook. On the contrary, she is a career woman, a businesswoman who regards her regular customers as her best friends.

She would entertain customers in her women's clothing store, often sending me to the grocery store to buy them soda, tea, or ice cream, as if these people were guests in her home. She would hold personal conversations with them, gain their confidence and trust, and sooner or later be able to convince them to buy most of the clothes she suggested.

My mother's clothing store catered to the needs of women who pursued taste but were budget-conscious, including pastor's wives, banker's wives, bridge enthusiasts, and so on. These are ladies wearing white gloves, trying on clothes one by one and talking about their lives.

With my mother’s elegant demeanor as a backdrop, our store was like a talk show at those times. I learned a lot of useful tips about getting along with people from my mother, which came in handy years later when I started interviewing authors for articles and books. I've learned to never interrupt a person when they want to explain themselves and are having trouble explaining themselves. People are often very candid in those moments, and their pauses or sudden changes in subject may indicate that there is something embarrassing or irritating to them. I “overheard” them while running errands in my mother’s clothing store as a child, and their voices left a lasting impression on me for decades to come.

As I think back to my parents’ rapport that lasted over 60 years and how they combined love, tolerance and many talents, I understand that I learned more from them than from the classroom or teachers Learned more there. It is precisely because of these accumulations that I was able to later become a reporter and writer for Time Weekly.