"She charged me $6.00." That's highway robbery!!

Of all the things a woman would be upset about.  Lets see, someone stepped on her new shoes, maybe a bird got her just in the right spot, or perhaps she left her passport at the airport. These are things that warrant being upset!!! Absolutely, I would be for sure.  But Noooooo!!!  This woman ranted on about something else.  Of course she had no clue who she was speaking to.  You see I never meet a stranger. That's right, I don't have a problem striking up a casual conversation with anyone. On this day it was about sewing. Yes, my favorite subject. However, this time it wasn't about me and what I do. I carefully held my interest in sewing my little secret until I allowed her to give me her thoughts. Her thoughts were exactly what she gave me, in all its glory.

I'll need to take you back a bit to a time when there was that little ole lady that lived down the block, or was a Sister in the church that sewed.  She wasn't actually a seamstress for all.  Just that little ole lady we all came to love and call upon to do our mending and sew up the choir robes, or usher uniforms or to sew on the patches for our newly deserved high school letter-mans jackets we wore so proudly.  Maybe she made a few really nice designer look alike for your prom or a friends prom or party, maybe she became so good at her craft that she became acclaimed by many far outside our like circle.

Stay with me now....., this is good.  After all this little ole lady's experience and her well earned expertise and how revered she has become, and after all the accolades of today and how you would "go tell it on the mountain"...."over the hills" and everywhere, you tell everyone: SHE is "GOOD!!" The woman is REAL GOOD!!!!

But wait!.. she is not good enough to charge you $6.00 to put a few darts in your jeans.

This was the conversation I endured with this stranger.  My lady (the little ole-lady), she says, charged me only $3.00, how can this new woman think what she is doing so great that it warrants charging me $6.00.  Man I can do that myself!  

To that I say, get a machine, take a class, if you trust the teacher and do it yourself!

I love teaching folks how to sew.  In my humble opinion, I believe two things regarding skilled services.  When it comes to schools and education, each parent should be required to be put in the teacher's shoes for one week in order to respect what they go through, and the other is, anybody that wears "women" clothes should learn what it takes and what goes into producing what they wear from inception to display.  There is a great deal of work that goes into skilled services, and unless artisans and customers are educated, there will continue to be this kind of disdain and low respect for a well earned good days pay.