Grandmas Against Magazines

by Frank Smith

My grandmother once told me that if I wanted to save money, I should not buy magazines. Magazines, she said, were trivial expenses.

Because I looked up to my grandmother, who is awesome, I took her advice — to the letter. I did not buy magazines. Ever. They were trivial and if you bought one then you might buy the next issue a month later and pretty soon you were out, maybe, three dollars. This was the ’80s, and I was in middle school and that was when magazines were just flowing off the presses and could be purchased for a buck or two or however much they cost (no one knows, no one remembers).

My grandma is a first-generation immigrant whose parents had come to Ellis Island on a boat from Slovakia. My great-grandparents brought all four or five of their children with them, possibly even leaving one behind (depending on who was telling the story), and my grandma was the first child of theirs born in Columbus, Ohio, USA.

My great-grandmother died when my grandmother was still a little kid, so my grandma took on all of the household chores — and she worked hard. These were the times after the Depression, so there wasn’t a lot of money to go around either. They all had to take care of each other.

Through hard work (because that still paid off back then, I think), everyone on that side of the family started from nothin’ and made their life somethin’.

My grandfather was also a hard worker. He was a veteran of World War II and had been injured so badly when a bridge exploded that the doctors said he’d never walk again and he’d die by age 30. Not only did my grandpa live to be in his seventies, but he could walk and drink scotch and drive the biggest fucking Lincoln Continental ever made (not while drinking scotch, though). Grandpa worked hard, still had most of his hair when he passed away, and he took care of his family.

While raising the kids, my grandma had jobs and she kept the house together. Their house was always clean and the food was good. Sometimes grandma let me play with her oil paints because she was teaching herself how to paint beach landscapes.

So, when my grandma told me to lay off buying magazines because they were expensive and trivial, I laid off buying magazines. I felt like she was importing great wisdom to me. I was kind of dumb, though, and took things way too literally and didn’t understand what she was really trying to tell me (which I’ll get to in a minute).

I did not buy magazines. Ever. Instead, I bought other stuff — comic books, mostly. I collected so many different series of comic books (from Alpha Flight to X-Men) that I sometimes shoplifted to keep up with back issues and trades and, I mean, you have to understand the full story or else the stuff just doesn’t make sense sometimes. (Sorry, grandma, I’m, yeah, not proud of that.)

Anyway, comics were important to me, and I found jobs to keep up with the habit, and I sorta worked hard at those jobs, but not really hard enough that I could keep up with the books I thought I needed to read without cramming Sandman trades down my pants every now and again. (Again, totally regretful. At least I wasn’t doing drugs, right?)

As an adult, with a lot of messy thoughts in my head, I look back and think, “Wow, that jerk kid could compartmentalize.”

Eventually, comics began to lose their luster (which happened sometime around when Rob Liefeld was drawing itty-bitty feet on X-Men), and I found myself questioning the thing about magazines. I was at a party, and I was talking to a cool guy named Jeff who was really polite to me, even though I was shit-talking magazines in a way that most people would consider strange, specific, and anti-social.

But Jeff was the kind of guy who could drink a whole bottle of Boone’s Farm, barf all over the mall food court, and still make it to the Nine Inch Nails concert on time. He was together, and I respected his opinion.

I was being snotty and said something really incisive like, “I hate magazines. They’re so stupid, all full of articles you want to read, with their pictures of pretty ladies, and maybe also photos of rad stuff to buy. Magazines su-u-u-uck.”

“What are you talking about?” Jeff said. “Magazines are awesome. I love to read magazines. They’re fun.”

That was pretty much exactly what he said. Jeff had a purity of language to him.

So I tried out buying a magazine, and I liked the results. You could read some stuff, learn a thing, and look at more kinds of stuff.

My discovery of magazines also occurred during a time (the ’90s) when magazines were pretty good. You had Ray Gun and Might and Jane and Spy and Mean and Magnet and some other cool-sounding magazines that I could have been reading instead of Hit Parader.

After a few cycles of splurge purchasing, I found a balance point where I could buy the odd magazine whenever the mood struck, maybe even subscribe to one, and definitely always pick one up at the airport. (I also stopped shoplifiting because I never felt good about stealing and people I knew who didn’t feel bad about shoplifting ended up in places like juvie).

I think what my grandma meant when she told me not to buy magazines was that you should watch those little purchases because they add up. You know, the things that are impulsive and trite, because if you get in the habit of always buying something that’s cheap just because it’s there, you end up buying a lot of little things you don’t need — and then thinking you need to have them no matter what, and if you can’t afford to buy a thing and you take it, you better be stealing food to feed your starving family or else you’re just an asshole.

Spending money on dumb stuff really adds up, which I’ve learned as an adult who has had to cancel magazine subscriptions in order to keep the lights on.

Anyway, grandma was using a magazine as an example. (In retrospect, perhaps, a comic book would have had deeper resonance.)

She didn’t mean that magazines were stupid and I should hate them. Though maybe she did. I can’t remember ever seeing her read a magazine.

Maybe grandma did hate magazines. Maybe grandma still does. Who really knows what grandmas think about magazines.

Lately, though, as I look toward having a kid and keeping the lights on and trying to work hard at stuff that I like (and the stuff I don’t like because, fuck it, that’s life), I walk past magazine stores (because they have them in New York) and buy magazines. I then read the parts I haven’t already Instapapered or gleaned the gist of from the Atlantic Wire, and worry that I have taken one small step towards destroying my family’s financial future.

All I really truly know is that I can’t blame magazines or my grandma for that.

Frank Smith lives in Brooklyn. Photo: FontShop

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