Bernie took me to the doctor's office once and they mistook him for my father and I was pleased. He gave me a lot of affection. He just exuded friendship; one of the warmest person I ever knew. My parents were never like that to me. They were too burdened. The biggest thing he taught me was how to drive a car. You know you had to have practice. Maybe one hour, fifteen times. He was a mason, I don't know what that means exactly except he had become very, very Americanized. Well we lived near each other in the Bronx and then we lived within three miles of each other in Queens. I remember they also took me to a beach club. A place for you to tan, a pool, snacks, you could swim, some sports. Castle Hill Beach; we still have those in the city. I don't think it was on the bay but it was near by; in between the Whitestone and the Throgs Neck, but the Throgs Neck wasn't built yet. That happened when I was thirty. I spent a lot of time there; they had a garden apartment. One main street down three miles, I did it by bicycle. My father was not around. I worked in the pharmacy delivering prescriptions by bicycle; I did it three years total. When I was in high school I would work twenty hours a week. I worked in the pharmacy, and I didn't know what I wanted, so I went to pharmacy school with three other fellows that lived in the neighborhood. We carpooled: for a whole year I was a passenger. I didn't have access to a car. When I was there I was so unhappy because it was all memorization. It didn't pull me; I was just doing it to have a safe job. I went to Jewish Family Services and took an aptitude test. Every Y has a Jewish Family Services. It came out I did not have a visual thing of how things work, whatever that means. I was missing something for engineering. But with accounting, everything clicked. The type of thinking fit my personality and I could incorporate my desire to teach. I can explain things to people, different tax breaks they can take, how they can work their business, or manipulate money. How do you evaluate numbers? You have to have some way of looking at them. It's all about relationships. I see numbers as a game, it's like having fun. They can help you understand things better. I used to read the bridge columns. I was always interested because it was the most intricate of all the card games. A lot of reasoning, there are a lot of things you can do if you see the opportunities. It has ratios and field memory. If you can count cards, you could construct a whole deck. It's definitely a science, a type of memory. My math skills are within a certain parameter. I cannot be a physicist. What I have is a concrete math. One of my claims to fame is in the algebra regional, I scored a hundred. I knew I had fantastical mathematical ability in one area of math.