Free B000FC0RL0 EBOK by Jerry Stiller Page B

ended, everyone took home cake. This was for the in-laws. My grandmother’s dinners went on for years.
    When I was fifteen my grandmother took ill. She needed a transfusion. I arrived at Memorial Hospital, where the doctors checked my bloodand found that I was O-negative, the same type as my grandmother. I was scared but as I watched my blood filling the jar, the fear disappeared. When the family heard that I’d donated blood, cries of joy went up. “Jerry gave blood,” they said. This made me special. My grandparents had instilled a fear of doctors in my father’s family, and it had paralyzed them. Ironically, most of them lived into their late eighties and rarely went to a doctor.
    Three years later, I arrived at my grandparents’ apartment in my uniform and sat at the same table with my aunts and uncles. My grandfather sat alone at the head of the table. I waited for my grandmother to appear and light the Sabbath candles. When she didn’t, I asked where Bobbi was. There was silence, and I knew.
    “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I asked. I could have seen her before she died.
    At the time it upset me. Today I think of it as my grandparents’ way of protecting their grandchildren from pain.
    When I returned to Fort Knox, I was assigned to an eight-week course in radio at the Armored School. That’s where I met Joe DiSpigno.
    Joe and I were the only New Yorkers in our company at the school. We were both 5-foot-6, weighed about 150 pounds, and when standing next to each other looked like twin fire hydrants.
    On the first day of class the T/4 instructor explained the international Morse code: “Dit-da is A, da-dit-dit is B, da-da-dit is C …”
    Joe was in the row in front of me and turned around, rolling his eyes back in his head as if seeking help. His eyes met mine. I seemed to be the only one who could read his thoughts. “Can we take eight weeks of this?” I knew he was thinking.
    When the class was over, he said, “I’m Joe DiSpigno. I’m from Astoria. You’re from New York too?”
    I told him I was.
    “Thank God. We’re the only ones. How’d you get here?” he asked.
    “It’s a long story,” I said.
    “Let’s get together tonight at the Post Library,” he said. “It’s nice and quiet. We can look around. You know, pick up a few books.”
    That night, for want of anything else to do, I met Joe in the library. As we browsed we told each other about our eighteen and a half years on the planet.
    “I lived on the Upper West Side when I was a kid,” he said. “West Sixty-seventh Street, near Ederle’s Pork Store. His daughter Gertrude swam the English Channel.”
    “I’m not into pork,” I said.
    “Neither am I,” Joe said. “Jews are right about that. You can get trichinosis. Why’d you join the army?” he asked.
    “To get away from home. My parents were always fighting. It made it hard,” I said.
    “I thought Jewish families didn’t fight,” Joe DiSpigno said. “Didn’t they love you?”
    “Sure. They just fought with each other. They never laid a hand on us kids.”
    “You’re lucky,” Joe said. “When Italian families fight, kids better go hide someplace.”
    There was a pause.
    “You’re Jewish and I’m Italian. Being from New York makes us exactly alike. Different from the other guys here.”
    That was the truth.
    “So. What are you going to do when you get out?” Joe asked as we were leaving the library.
    “I want to be an actor.”
    It didn’t shock or surprise him. It seemed to interest him.
    “You really want to be an actor?”
    I don’t know why I’d told him. It’s not something you tell everybody. It’s more of a secret wish that you harbor inside yourself. People usually would laugh when I mentioned it.
    “What kind of actor?” Joe said.
    “A comedian.” There was another pause.
    “Why a comedian?”
    “I like to make people laugh.”
    We reached the barracks.
    “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.
    From that moment on, he was my