"What's in a Name? Ask Poppie"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

I have been called many things in my life, not all of them repeatable in polite company, which I am seldom in anyway.

But the one I love to hear repeated is Poppie, which is what I am called by my 2-year-old granddaughter, Chloe.

My wife, Sue, who is called nothing but good things, especially by me, because without her I would be a four-letter word (“dead”), is known to Chloe as Nini.

I’m glad Sue and I have such wonderful grandparent names because we could have been called a lot worse.

I found this out recently when I saw that two fine family-oriented groups, BabyCenter (which provides advice on pregnancy and parenting) and the American Grandparents Association (which is what it sounds like), have each come out with a list of names that grandmothers and grandfathers are called these days, whether they like it or not.

At the top — or, if you prefer, the bottom — of the grandfather list is PeePaw. No offense to any guy whose grandchild calls him by that name, but I can’t imagine Chloe saying to me, “PeePaw, I have to go pee-pee.”

Then again, Poppie is perilously close to that post-Pampers potty predicament (and besides, it sort of rhymes), so maybe PeePaw isn’t so bad after all.

Then there’s Chief, which is considered a trendy name for grandfathers but sounds more like what Jimmy Olsen called Perry White in the 1950s “Superman” TV series. It conjures the following exchange:

Chloe: “Hey, Chief, pass me the coloring book.”

Me: “Here you go, Honey. And don’t call me Chief!”

A great grandfather name (though not a great-grandfather name) is the unlisted and presumably unique moniker bestowed on David Wright, not the New York Mets slugger but a professional window cleaner who recently cleaned the windows at our house: Granddude. For a goateed guy who used to be both a lawyer and a monk, it fits.

My buddy Tim Lovelette, who has four granddaughters, has two grandfather names, both on the AGA list: Big Daddy and Grumpy.

“Both are pretty accurate,” Tim once told me.

His wife, Jane, also is known by two names on the AGA list: Go-Go (she’s a marathon runner) and Grammy (I didn’t know she could sing, but I eagerly await her first album).

If Jane becomes famous, she’ll join other celebrities on the AGA list, including Donald Trump, who is known to his grandchildren — with great affection, I am sure — as Mr. Trump.

I can just imagine one of his grandkids sitting on his knee, running tiny fingers through his comb-over and asking, “Mr. Trump, will I be a hair to your fortune?”

On the grandmother side is Martha Stewart, who is called, simply, Martha.

I’m sure she would recommend using fine china to serve Count Chocula to your perfect little grandchild. And, in a pinch, she’d probably pass along this creative tip: “If you run out of Huggies, a doily will do.”

There are no celebrities on the BabyCenter list, but there are some pretty creative grandparent names.

For grandmothers: Gramma-Bamma (“Gramma-Bamma, would you read me ‘Green Eggs and Hamma’ ”?), Safta (“Do I Safta go to bed so early?”) and Yumma (“Yumma, Yumma, your cookies hit the spot in my tumma!”).

For grandfathers: Bumpy (“Get in your carseat, it’s gonna be a Bumpy ride”), Coach (at bedtime: “Put me in, Coach”) and Koko (“I’m cuckoo for Koko!”).

If I can help it, Chloe will never see these lists. But she’d no doubt agree that some grandparent names are better than others.

Take it from Nini and Poppie.

Copyright 2015 by Jerry Zezima

"A Glass Act"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

I do windows. Unfortunately, I do them every couple of years, which gives the windows plenty of time to get dirty, and even then it is clear that I don’t do them very well because I have always considered the job a pane in the glass.

This year, I let a professional end my losing streak, which was, of course, in each window.

Enter (through the front door, not a window) David Wright, owner of Mr. Wright’s Window Cleaning of Centerport, New York.

Not to be confused with the New York Mets slugger of the same name (“He  doesn’t do windows as well as I do, but I can’t hit a baseball as well as he can”), Wright was a lawyer, a financial analyst and a monk before devoting his life to letting the sunshine into the lives of others by cleaning their windows.

“I want to make people happy,” Wright said. “And a lot of people are happy when their windows are clean.”

I knew I would be happy if my windows were clean because it also would give happiness to my wife, Sue, who had been after me for the past two years to use Windex and a roll of paper towels, not to mention a little elbow grease, to clean the windows.

“Elbow grease is a prime source of smudges and streaks,” I told her.

Sue wasn’t buying it, which is why I ended up buying a reasonably priced cleaning package (10 windows for $49) so she could finally meet Mr. Wright.

“I’m David,” he said, introducing himself to Sue. “I’m here to clean your windows.”

Sue swooned. “Thank you,” she replied. “They could use it.”

Wright started on the outside, where he told me that his wife, Joanne, likes the way he does the windows at their house but wishes he would do them more often.

“I’m working seven days a week,” he said, adding that he started the business last year and will be joined next year by his son Collier, a U.S. Army Ranger who is serving in Iraq. “So I don’t have the time to do our windows too often.”

“That excuse isn’t going to work for me,” I said.

“You’ll have to think of another one,” Wright said as he used a water-fed pole with a nylon brush to clean the outside of the windows in the living, dining and family rooms.

“Nylon?” I said. “Theoretically, I could clean windows with my wife’s stockings.”

“Theoretically,” Wright responded, “it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

What would be a good idea, he added, is to use resin instead of soap. “I’m using it now,” he said. “It’s much more effective.”

As he worked, Wright, who is 53, told me that he started out as a lawyer (“If you go to the bathroom, bring work with you so you can bill your clients”), then got into financial services before giving up all his material possessions and spending time in a monastery, where he decided he wanted to make people happy for a living.

“I am doing my second-favorite thing,” he said, referring to cleaning windows, which allows him to meditate while he works.

“What’s your favorite thing?” I inquired.

“I’d like to be a professional poker player,” Wright said. “But my wife doesn’t think it’s a safe bet.”

When we moved inside, Wright said that customers always kid him about having the same name as the Mets star. “They’ll say, ‘When you finish with my windows, are you going to Citi Field?’ Maybe I should give them my autograph,” said Wright, who cleaned the windows with a long razor blade encased in a scraper. He also used a squeegee and a scrubber made of lamb’s wool and AstroTurf.

“And I use Dawn,” he said.

“Who’s she?” I asked.

“The person you can get to clean your windows,” said Wright, though he really meant the dishwashing liquid. “Don’t tell your wife, but most windows are dirtier on the inside than they are on the outside.”

I didn’t tell Sue, who was nonetheless amazed when Wright was finished.

“Wow!” she squealed. “These windows have never been so clean.”

“The trick,” Wright said, “is to keep them that way.”

“I’ll do my part,” I said. “In two years, I’ll give you another call.”

Copyright 2015 by Jerry Zezima