Meat Counter

March 4, 2021

My friend Tony Infantino is a professional counter of blessings, and last week he was counting... meat. Yes, meat.

Technically, Tony's job isn't to be a professional blessing-counter; as the morning show DJ on WARM 101.3 in Rochester, NY, he's more like a professional ratings-driver. Connection is the name of the game in radio, and Tony's radio persona is, and has been for 40 years, Nice Guy. I've been his Friday guest for the past 12 years, and it's been fascinating to watch him connect with listeners with his signature brand of high positivity that never descends to sticky-sweet.

Part of Tony's secret sauce is that he actually is a nice guy...it would probably be impossible to maintain the image for decades if he weren't. But his extra-special talent is his ability to catch and pin down stray observations about life and hold them up to the light for the rest of us to see... insofar as anyone can do that in a medium that relies exclusively on sound waves.

Last week, Tony said on the air (or maybe during the after show podcast), "You know what still amazes me? That you can walk into a grocery store and the guy behind the counter will cut you a slice of meat to whatever thickness you want, from whatever part of the cow you want."

Now, that seemed a little over the top even to me, a fellow blessings-counter: I was concerned that maybe the pandemic was getting to him, and the only positive thing he could find to talk about was cuts of meat. I stared at him through the Skype screen. But no, he was perfectly on the level: He really was reveling in how a perfectly-carved top round is available to anyone at practically any time.

So I thought about meat for a few days. And along the way, I realized that these kinds of comments, this unique lens through which Tony appreciates small-but-actually-big things in the world, is his special way of saying grace.

We need more professional grace-sayers in our world, don't you think? When we notice them, let's hold them up to the light.

—Deb