I’m guessing it was around mid October 1975 when I was laying around my bedroom. How do I know? Simple. I was in a body cast. On September 30th of that same year, I was playing in my first football season. With four seconds left until halftime, I shattered my femur. When the pile unraveled, my right leg was so mangled that the heel of my foot was pointing straight ahead. The surgeon at the hospital said I broke my leg in so many places, if the pieces were any smaller it would be powder. After what felt like a million hours of surgery, the jigsaw puzzle formerly known as my right femur was back together. But the doctors felt like the only way it would heal properly was to put me in a cast from my chest to my toes. I had to stay that way for several weeks. The bad news was cable television hadn’t been invented yet. No HBO, no Wii, no Xbox…whatever. The good news was the nuns had one less ass to whip on a daily basis. I had a Playboy magazine that I kept hidden in my cast. I saved those moments for when I was extremely bored. To be honest, when you’re 13, you can get extremely bored over and over again. But let’s face it, not even masturbation can cover an entire day. One of the lay teachers at school (not a nun), Mrs. Casso (if anyone cares I thought she was hot too), gave me a group of paperback books. One was called North Dallas Forty. Another was the Paper Lion. Those books were read first. There was also one by Jerry Kramer called Instant Replay. It became one of my favorites. He was an offensive guard for the Green Bay Packers back in the day. You know, when men didn’t get fined for hitting too hard. There was a fourth book that didn’t match the other three. I saved it for last. It was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I don’t know why I chose this book last. I was a fan of this kind of writing as a kid. When I was 12 I read a book called the Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. I know what you’re thinking…a lot of book for a 12 year old. Then again as my mother would always say, I was quite eccentric for a young man. I always loved how my mother had these terms for people. She would never say someone was gay. She’d say with a Southern lilt, “He’s a little light in the loafers.” To this day, I don’t know what that means. But I love when she says it. I felt if I read a book called Think and Grow Rich, all I would have to do is read it…think…then grow rich. I read every word in that book. I read it all the way to the ISBN. For the uninitiated, that’s the catalog number for the Library of Congress. Then I laid in my bed and began to think. But I didn’t grow rich. So in true Vinnie fashion, I picked up the book and read it again, cover to cover. I read the ISBN, dedication, foreword…the whole thing. Once again, I laid there and meditated. I still wasn’t rich. I told you that to tell you this. Too often people come to me for answers. A lot of them want the easy way out. “Vinnie, what can I eat to lose weight?” “What’s the minimum amount of exercise I need to get in shape?” “What can I do to get my ass off of my knees and back where it belongs?” They want the quick answer. At age 48, I’ve now read Think and Grow Rich more times than I can count. I’ve also read other Napoleon Hill books, such as the Law of Success. What I’ve come to understand is that getting rich is more than monetary. It’s who you are, and how you treat others. It’s how you relate to the world and how the world relates to you. That same synergy, that same calm piece of mind, is what’s needed in any endeavor you take on. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bike ride, a marathon, a triathlon, or to lose 100 pounds, or 10 pounds. You have to do it for the right reasons. You have to do it for yourself.
