It was the summer of 1986.
I was 13 years old, helping my grandfather as he worked as a porter stocking the shelves and taking inventory in a drug store in Ramsey, New Jersey. I was young, but people saw me as the splitting image of my grandfather: skinny, naive, and eager-to-please.
My favorite toys were Construx, Hot Wheels cars and toys, and Kenner Star Wars action figures.
I was helping my grandfather stock the aisles when of course we came upon the toy aisle of that little drug store. I would always linger when it came time to stock and inventory action figures or Matchbox cars. Matchbox were pretty and had better detail, but Hot Wheels were fast! I loved both.
I then found the beautiful bright orange-and-blue Hot Wheels Deluxe Car Wash set staring back at me. It was awesome! It used actual water and rotating brushes to wash the cars, just like a real car wash! It would spin-dry the cars before they rolled down the chute afterwards!
I asked my grandfather, begged “pretty please!” and he told me I already received a gift, that I already had toys, and that the Car Wash Set was a bit more expensive than anything we had planned.
I was dismayed. I was disappointed. But I loved and respected my grandfather more than any toy on the shelf or potential for gifts. When he said “No” to something, I understood and respected that as a finality.
So I went about my day. It was actually fairly busy, and the hours flew by. My favorite part of the day was stocking the paperback books at the front of the store. I never understood why “bodice-ripper romance” were so ridiculously popular. The covers were always ridiculous, chest-baring men with half-dressed women. Adults could be so weird! My favorite books were the science fiction and fantasy paperbacks by James Blish, Ray Bradbury, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
It was 5:30 PM after a long day, and my Pop-Pop and I were walking out to the car. He was carrying a large paper sack, but I thought nothing of it, probably white pill bottles with meds for him and Nana, or supplies for the house.
We both sat down in his pale blue Chevy Malibu, made hot and stuffy by its long day sitting in the sun. He set the paper bag down at my feet, put the keys in the ignition, started the car, and stopped.
“Ken, look in the bag.”
“Sure. Why?”
I bent over, pulled up the brown paper bag, looked inside, and pulled out a bright orange-and-blue box with the Hot Wheels logo emblazoned into the side. My eyes could not have grown bigger. My grin could not have grown wider.
“People do not respect that which they do not earn. When something comes easily to someone, they think everything will come easy to them. They think it is their right to have everything and anything, there for the taking. When you work for something, when you earn it, you respect it, you cherish it, you understand its value and what it took for you to get it.”
Pop-Pop was never lavish with his gifts. There was never an over-abundance of gifts underneath the Christmas tree. But each and every gift I received from him meant the world to me. I loved and wanted each gift he gave me. I knew what it meant and took for him to get them and to give them. He knew that I would respect and cherish each gift, to not readily discard anything given to me by hard work, effort, or given from the heart.