A Grand Time

I am so incredibly blessed.  Not only am I lucky enough to have two of my grandparents living and with it, but I live within 45 minutes to each of them.  We see my Grandma (G Squared, to the girls) nearly every week and my Grandpa (Pa to the girls) every couple of months.

Tonight, we took a trip down to Pa's house.  I get such a kick of showing The Curly Girlies old pictures of my siblings and me, because no matter how many times they see them, they are still amazed to find out that the baby is truly me!  Sometimes I wonder if they think I was just placed here as an adult, because they always act shocked when I show them pictures of my younger self.

Pa doesn't have toys for the girls to play with, but tonight they busied themselves with a chess set.  B has been teaching herself to play and after setting up the board she asked if I'd like to play a game with her.  Given that I beat the pants off her last time, I said yes.

"Ok Mommy,  you can be white," she offered.

"So, does that mean I go first?," I asked (showing my mad chess skillz).

"Yes, Mommy," she sighed.

Great.  I made my first move and back and a forth we went.  I really thought I was doing great until she moved a piece up alongside one of mine (still in the row where it started) and said, "Check!"  I thought she had captured my bishop, but evidentially, it was my king (see, mad chess skillz, I tell ya).  She was ecstatic and I'm thinking I'll get that book on how to play chess she's been asking me to buy.  A little later, she tried her hand at teaching L to play and gave up after a bit.  I guess she realized teaching a 5 year old to play chess is harder than actually playing it.

After she gloated about winning, we wandered into the sunroom where I spied a stack of CD's and cassette tapes.

"Hey B," I asked, showing her a tape. "What's this?"

"Um. . . I don't know.  Something you listen to music with?"

"How does it work?"

"I think you have to take a screwdriver to wind this part," she answered, pointing to the holes (if there is a more technical term, it escapes me right now, which is kind of ironic.  I guess I shouldn't be asking questions I myself can't answer).

"But how does it work, B?," I asked, through laughter.

"I don't know!," she replied, laughing.  "How?"

I ran off to grab my camera/phone, mainly because I figured I'd put it on Facebook and allow my friends' kids to take a stab at this.

When I got back, The Doctor was holding a VHS tape and was asking the same kind of questions.

"What is this?," he queried.

"We watch The Magic School Bus on that at school, sometimes," piped up M.

"Ok, but what is it?," he posed again.

"Um. . . I don't know what it's called, but it's something you watch and then you use something to rewind it.," answered B, clearly perplexed.

"How do you watch it?," The Doctor asked.

I was beginning to feel I was watching one of those "Kids React" Youtube videos live.  If you've never seen one, I highly suggest you boogie on over to Youtube as soon as you finish reading this and watch some of those videos.  If you were born in the eighties or earlier, it will make you laugh and feel old at the same time!

"Well," she started to explain. "You put it into the thing and it just starts working."

"But how?," The Doctor pressed on.

"I don't know!," B answered, clearly exasperated.

Finally, The Doctor took pity on her and explained to her how it works, opening up the flap so she and M could see how the tape worked in the VCR.

"Then you take a screwdriver to rewind it, right?," she asked.

"No.  Actually, they made machines for that.," he answered, a bit confused.

I showed him the cassette tape and said, "She thought you needed a screwdriver to rewind this."

"No, B.  No. 2 pencils worked the best with those," he said and I nearly fell down laughing again.

I know I shouldn't laugh.  How can I when these "old" things are so foreign to today's generation?  This is the generation of instant gratification.  The generation of digital everything.  When I was little, the only way I could see a picture right away was to use the big, clunky Polaroid camera.  If we used the real deal, we'd have to wait until the roll of film was used ("Do not waste the film by taking pictures of the ground, CG!," a parent would admonish), then we'd have to wait until it was fully developed.  So much disappointment ensued going through the pictures at the Photo Center at the pharmacy, only to see that out of 20 shots, only 1 turned out decent.

I take a picture of the girls now and they immediately run over to me clambering, "Let me see!  Please, let me see it right now!"

We were talking about how funny (sad?) it was that B and M didn't know what the old timer things were and Pa pointed out how much technology has changed in the last few decades.  Pa has been around to see all of it.  How amazing is that?  He is well into his nineties and I think it's amazing that he's been around to see so many changes, both wonderful and terrible, in this world.  Talking to him is always so interesting, because he always gives some little snippet about himself that I never knew before.  Today, I learned that he loves sugar snap peas and that when he was boy he would help his mother shell them.  "By the time I was finished there were much less than what we started with, because I ate them as I went.," he chuckled, as he took a bite into a sugar snap pea.  I love that he shared that with me for 2 reasons.  First of all, it has never, ever occurred to me that you can eat these sweet veggies raw and I'll definitely be buying them for The Curly Girly Trio to snack on this week.  Secondly, I have a tendency to be a bit cheesy and I'll never again be able to eat a sugar snap pea without thinking of him.

I love the fact that my girls know G Squared and Pa as their great grandparents and not just as my memories.  I especially love that they are getting to make their own memories to take with them into adulthood.  Who knows, maybe when The Curly Girlies are adults, they'll see a sugar snap pea and say to their Curly Child, "My Pa loved sugar snap peas and I think of him every time I eat one" biting into it with a snap.