Years ago as I was trying to figure out what I was going to be when I grew up, I pondered the idea of starting a non-profit organization that gathered clothes for women returning to the work force.  Now more than a decade later after founding other businesses and writing many books, in a true full circle moment I had the pleasure of donating my first executive desk, office furniture and more business suits than I can count to the new local chapter of Dress for Success. I am thrilled that someone has started just such a charity!!!

One of the suits I had so much fun donating was the very suit I write about in this excerpt from Dream Big.

“I am often asked to do public speaking, and my beloved daughter Harlie has assigned herself the job of making sure I look right when I do it. Every time I am asked to speak the first thing Harlie asks is what I am going to wear. After all, in her mind if I don’t use these invites as an excuse to get a new outfit, what’s the point!

When the American Marketing Association asked me to speak, Harlie happened to be home for spring break. It was a nice treat to actually have her present in the dressing room instead of on the other end of a cell phone giving styling tips. After trying on a dozen things, we finally settled on a new suit and headed home to make sure the shoes and shirt I had in my closet would match. It was a go.

The next morning, however, the universe had a surprise in store for me. When I went to put on the approved ensemble I noticed a bulge in the jacket. Sticking out of my armpit was a huge white security sensor that the clerk at the store had forgotten to take out. I don’t know why we didn’t notice it sooner (or why we hadn’t set off the alarm as we left the store!), but I did know that I was in a real pickle since I had to speak in about an hour and, as usual, the rest of my “presentable” wardrobe was at the drycleaners.

Cursing myself for not picking up my drycleaning sooner I woke Harlie up to show her my predicament and beg her to race back to the store with the receipt and ask them to remove the sensor before I stood up in front of the AMA crowd looking like a shoplifter.

Being the good sport Harlie is she raced to the mall and stood outside waiting for the store open. What happened next still amazes me. When Harlie went to the counter and showed the clerk the receipt and the jacket and asked for the sensor to be removed, they told her they didn’t have the device to remove it! Didn’t have the device to remove it? What? Why would they be selling jackets at their store with sensors in them if they didn’t have the gadget to remove them?

Suffice to say, Harlie wasn’t exactly pleased. She explained the urgency to the manager on duty, who then began running around the mall to other stores asking if she could please use their security device to remove the tag. Oddly enough there is some rule against sharing these gadgets among stores, so that plan didn’t work.

Next the store manager called her other stores to see if any of them had the jacket in the right size without a security sensor sticking out. No luck. By this time Harlie was starting to steam and she made it clear that her mother was going to have this jacket back,  minus sensor,  in the next fifteen minutes or there would be hell to pay.

Desperate times must call for desperate measures because the next thing Harlie knew the manager had magically appeared from the back room holding a jacket in my size — sans sensor. Harlie called from her cell phone to let me know she was en route with the jacket.

We did a hand off in the garage and I raced off to give my speech. I arrived a little late and plenty frazzled and decided the only thing to do was to tell the truth. I have always been the type of gal who tells it like it is. So I shared the story of my wild morning with the audience. The women in the crowd laughed till they had tears rolling down their cheeks, the men didn’t quite get it. I guess that to guys once you’ve seen one suit you have seem them all, but for women getting dressed for public appearances can be a monumental task requiring the endurance of a dressing room marathon and the luck of the shopping Goddess to shine upon you—not to mention the pressure we have for that all important good hair day!

Dream Big is available at Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback