Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
When I was 10…11 (?) …
(Whatever age young, just-turning-nasty boys are when they were still reading MAD Magazine)
…my maternal grandfather, a great man who has influenced me in so very many ways, invited me to walk with him to the corner convenience store so he could likely get a pack of smokes. Parlements.
I asked him to buy me a MAD magazine. He approved. I then asked him to also buy me a Sport magazine. He said no. One magazine only.
I have no recall as to how I specifically responded, however, he clearly disapproved of whatever ungrateful and spoiled reaction I proffered. I simultaneously heard and felt his disapproving “fwap”, as he smacked me upside the head.
“I hate whining” he said rather matter-of-factly. He paid and we walked out of the store, without another word, back to his apartment where the rest of the family was celebrating something or other, never mentioned again.
My grandfather was a badass. A Bronx high school drop out, kicked-out actually. And an eventual self-made millionaire.
Badass, as in, possessing incredible resolve and integrity, pride, humility and smarts enough. Not big, not loud, not mean, not physical. He didn’t yell or bark, generally. He napped. He joked. He cried. He led. He became somewhat of a renaissance man later in life, once he saved, then revolutionized the humble printing business that his father began, before dying when Pop was 13 years old. Pop went back to school eventually, married three/four times, read Tolstoy, listened to Vivaldi, drank Bombay martinis, spoke gently, philosophized, tried oil painting, rented rather than owned, loved fine restaurants, was well known in the finest NYC establishments, ate sushi, and pigeon and smoked fishes and ate the eyeball of the Chinese whole fried fish for our amusement, loved opera, and women.
He despised tardiness, ignorance and lies. And he hated whining.
I am forever grateful for the lesson. The many lessons.
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