Grenko

Grenko, my old friend, took bottle after bottle of the bad liquor, one under his arm and one in each hand.

"Why must we have the bad liquor?" I asked Grenko. "We can afford something better, can't we?"

"It's tradition," was all he said.

It was, but still it made little sense to me. Tradition is the hurdle of common sense. "But Grenko," I said, "remember how unpleasant it is? The burn, the taste? Why must we make things more unpleasant than they need to be, if we have the power to do otherwise?"

He looked at me with such fact that I was a boy again. "It's tradition," he said, and we left.