I
did not know my great-grandfather I only met him once and then he
died. The one time that I met him was the summer when I was eleven and
my maternal grandma Joanne had come down to Utah for a visit with my
half-uncle David. It happened to be the first time I had ever met my
mentally ill and reclusive grandmother and her son David. We loaded
up one day to go and visit her dad in a nearby town. When we got
there we knocked at the door and rang the bell but no-one answered
even though we could see my grandfather and his brother puttering
about. We banged louder and they still didn't notice but the door was
locked. I had to go around to the back to see if there was a window
or door open and there was one in the downstairs back that I climbed
through. So technically I burglarized my great-grandfather's house
before I even met him. I walked to the front door without saying hi
or even making an effort to get my grandfather's attention I just
walked quickly to the front door and let my newly met grandmother and
uncle in. She caught up with her dad whom she had not seen in twenty
years with a perfunctory hug and kiss which neither of them seemed
that interested in and then she helped him get his hearing aid in and
absented herself. The idea was that my great-grandfather was
supposed to teach my teenage uncle and I the ins and outs of
chemistry a topic in which he was well versed. We really didn't want
to learn chemistry and he really didn't want to teach us but there we
were refugees on a living-room lifeboat twisting in the currants set
forth by others and we were waiting it out. He got out a book that he
wrote for a chemistry class and started telling us that the thing to
know about chemistry was that 90% was useless because most elements
were too rare or the reactions were not possible in ordinary
conditions. At that point his hearing aid started malfunctioning and
ringing quite loudly. I say quite loudly and that was from my
perspective and he didn't seem to mind. Until he took it out and held
it at arms length with one hand as he pointed out a modified
periodic table that excluded the unusual and unimportant elements.
David and I were trying to bear the noise of the thing and pay a
little attention but we were really not interested in the chemistry
or this old man that allegedly shared some of our genetic material. We
were saved in a few hours and went back home where we took a pile of
quarters and my brother down to the local greasy spoon where we spent
about six hours beating Street Fighter 2 with E. Honda. So the day
was not wasted.
