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Tip of the Hat to Pursuing Dreams
Making the point that there is simply no pleasing some people, the late great columnist Jim Murray liked to tell the story of a man who dived into the ocean to save a young boy from drowning, but instead of being thanked by the rescued child’s mother, she reprimanded: “But he had a hat on! Where’s his hat?”
Mary Tyler Moore’s character Mary Richards famously tossing her hat in the air makes a nice metaphor for chasing one’s dreams.
This tale flashed to my mind the other day when I performed the un-heroic act of holding a door open for a woman entering Barnes & Noble. Instead of a smile or thank you, she sneered: “I’m quite capable of opening a door myself.”
Apparently, however, she was incapable of being pleasant.
Which brings me to a second hat, one belonging to someone who always seemed pleasant. More than pleasant; buoyant; a human champagne bubble. Indeed, Mary Tyler Moore, a TV icon who passed away at age 80 on Jan. 25, could turn the world on with her smile.
She did so first as effervescent housewife Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and then even more famously as spunky, single, working woman Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
Moore’s death brought a hat to mind because of the familiar theme-song footage at the beginning of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” that concluded with Mary, crossing an intersection in downtown Minneapolis where she worked as a TV news producer, enthusiastically and confidently and happily flinging her knit cap high into the air.
As the show’s theme song said, she was “gonna make it after all.”
Making it after all, despite challenges, made me think of a third hat –making this column the literary equivalent of a hockey “hat trick” I suppose – this one from a story told by another late, great newspaper columnist, Jack Smith.
Actually, it wasn’t Smith’s own story. Rather, he related a tale that President Kennedy shared about coming upon a high wall that he was afraid to climb over even though he wanted to see what was on the other side.
What to do? JFK said he threw his hat over the wall – and thus had no choice but to scale it and go after his hat.
Mary Richards, I like to think, was symbolically throwing her hat over a wall in the intro footage of her TV show.
Too, it seems to me, many of us would do well to similarly throw our hats over a symbolic wall – forcing ourselves to climb high and go after our dreams.
Granted, chasing a dream puts one at risk of failure. But by not tossing our hat over the wall, we risk regret; we risk winding up as permanently dispirited as the mother complaining about her rescued son’s lost hat.
Have you long dreamed of learning to play a musical instrument; learning a new language; learning to surf or fly fish or play golf? Throw your hat over the wall by signing up for lessons.
Have you always dreamed of traveling to fill-in-the-destination? Throw your hat over the wall by booking a flight and putting in for vacation time.
Do you dream of climbing Mount Whitney or running a marathon? Get off the couch, buy hiking boots or running shoes, and see from what type of metal you are forged.
Is your dream to go back to school? Throw your hat over the wall and turn in an application.
Maybe your dream is to write a novel, but you don’t know how to start? Throw your hat over the wall and type an opening sentence! It matters not if you have no writing experience.
As Ernest Hemingway once told a friend, who was afraid to undertake a task for the same virginal reason: “What’s that got to do with it? I had no experience writing a novel until I wrote the first one.”
In other words, throw your hat over the wall – and do so with the gusto of Mary Richards. As “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” theme song concluded, “You might just make it after all.”
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.
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