The Briefcase that became a security blanket.
When I graduated from college, my mother and father drove some distance to my graduation. Although they never said it, I think they had a little pride because I was the first person on either side of the family to graduate from college.
They came with a graduation present. As my father handed it to me, he said, "Son, you are going out in the world of business and you need a businessman's briefcase." It was a beauty. It was dark brown with a slightly greenish color. And it had my initials, J.B.C. stamped on it in bright shiny gold.
Although I went on to spend 3 and a half years in graduate school, I had a well-paying job at the same time. Soon after graduation, my job required me to make my first business trip.
I took my loaded and heavy new briefcase with me and checked it as luggage because I didn’t want to wag that heavy thing around a couple of big airports. When they checked my briefcase as luggage they put on one of those old-fashioned paper tags with an elastic band they attached to the handle.
I never took that first tag off and left on the ones I accumulated in over 50 years of business travel, which built up a lot of tags. Much of the travel I did was to solve a problem. Over time, I started looking on that briefcase similar to a military battle flag, and all those paper tags like the rainbow of ribbons on a General’s chest.
Just having it with me gave me comfort and confidence in handling my next assignment. I walked into a new office filled with mostly strangers with my head held high and with lots of confidence that I could help them figure out a solution to the problem. And sometimes to show them that they had a problem they hadn’t recognized.
In my later years, with lots of tags on it, as you see in the above photo, my briefcase became a matter of pride, showing that I had experience and had been traveling for a long time.
That’s how a briefcase became something like a child’s security blanket. It gave me comfort just by having it with me.
The End.
