What happens to a grape when a cow steps on it?

It lets out a little whine.

Humans are like grapes except we don’t need to be stepped on by a cow to whine.

Whenever a man says, “I hate to complain,” you know he is about to. He will complain about being an innocent victim of a drive-by paintball war, that he can’t sleep because he’s worried about his insomnia, that American flags are made in China, and that his cereal wasn’t great like Tony the Tiger said it would be.

We like to complain so much that businesses have complaint departments.

In his book, “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind,” T. Harv Eker wrote, “Complaining is the absolute worst possible thing you could do for your health or your wealth.”

Once upon a time, I was in a small town in Alaska, sitting on a front porch with a friend named Keith Bakken.

It was a Norman Rockwell painting. It was a feet up, mouths open kind of a thing. The talk moved from the light-hearted to the serious. Other folks stopped by to add their two cents.

We watched the world go by. We watched the weather go over. We had cause to remember that happiness is an inside job. It’s not what we look at — it’s what we see.

We had no complaints. Keith had health issues, but he did not express concern. Those health problems claimed Keith’s life not long after. Keith had learned that it doesn’t do much good to complain. Either people don’t want to hear the complaints of another or they are overjoyed to hear of the troubles.

A minister in Kansas City began a non-profit organization called A Complaint Free World, Incorporated. It has distributed six million purple bracelets imprinted with the outfit’s name. Whenever someone wearing one of these bracelets hears himself or herself complaining, he or she is instructed to transfer the bracelet from one wrist to the other. The goal is to go 21 days without having to switch the bracelet. I suppose that if you really wanted to become a recovering whiner, you would stretch the bracelet and snap your wrist each time you complained.

The Rev. Will Bowen said, “We take for granted what we have and whine about what we don’t have.” He believes that gratitude reduces stress and that this reduction leads to better health.”

A friend told me that the world would be a better place if there were more front porches — locations famed for being dispensaries of stories and wisdom.

I have never had a front porch — at least not the open kind meant for conversing. We would sit on the front steps of our old farmhouse and pretend that we had a porch. Sometimes we’d listen to a radio playing through the screen window of the house. Other times, we would listen to the sounds of the farm and the conversation of the woods. We never complained about having no porch.

I love porches. A rocking chair makes the porch even better.

There we were in Alaska, on one of the best days in the history of mankind. It was a glorious day. There was no complaining in paradise. I sat on that porch with Keith. We talked until time demanded that we be elsewhere.

I remember another friend, who whenever anyone complained to him, would rub his thumb and fingers together and say, “Do you know what this is? It’s the world’s smallest violin playing, ‘My Heart Cries For You.’”

I talked to a woman at a home show. She was in a wheelchair and told me that she couldn’t complain and she was grateful for her parts that worked.

I visited a friend who moved from his house into a senior housing apartment. He told me that he had to sell most of his furniture since the new place was even tinier than he expected.

“How do you like living in a smaller place?” I asked.

He replied, “Well, I have no room for complaints.”

Complaints are sometimes necessary, but most serve no purpose. A mouse can complain all it wants to the cat. It doesn’t do the mouse any good. The best thing to do with our complaints is to save them up, take them to an echo point, and shout them at the echo until we are tired of hearing them.

I think of that time on the porch with Keith and the others often. I am so glad that day happened—that day on that porch in Alaska.

It was a day of gratitude — a day for which I am most thankful.

It was a day without complaint.

Hartland resident Al Batt’s column appears every Wednesday.