My wife and I had the great pleasure of watching our five year old granddaughter\’s dance recital yesterday afternoon in Northern New Jersey. The overall show was wonderful, heartwarming and genuinely entertaining. And our granddaughter was great (Ok, it\’s grandpa and grandma talking, but – at least in our eyes – she really was).
This, believe it or not, leads me to Gary Bettman, commissioner of the National Hockey League (NHL).
The reason? He was also at yesterday\’s dance recital to see his granddaughter.
I am not a hockey fan. I have never met Mr. Bettman personally. But the fact that, during the NHL playoffs (which, for the league\’s Commissioner, I would think, is roughly the equivalent of early April for a CPA), he found it sufficiently important to be there for his granddaughter, makes him a real Man to me. And that capital “M” is no typo.
I doubt that this will show his granddaughter what a terrific grandpa she has (though I\’m certain she already knows for other reasons). Not immediately, anyway. But it is the kind of thing she will appreciate in retrospect, years from now; something that will show how much she means to grandpa. And, of course, grandpa gets something out of it too: like me, he will have the enormously pleasurable memory of seeing his granddaughter perform, on stage, in front of a packed auditorium.
A major tip of my imaginary hat to Gary Bettman; a Man who knows what is important in life.
