Did you ever find yourself in the middle of telling a grandson an exciting, rambling episode from your past when you noticed his eyes glaze over or worse, sneak a peek at the screen in his hand? I have a tendency to reminisce…a lot. I don’t know about you, but my backstories are always bumping my heels like I’m dragging my old Radio Flyer wagon filled with photo albums demanding to be opened and shared. Telling important, and not so important, tales of times and events in my past is a way to extend and prolong my life beyond my years…a kind of spoken diary for grandkids who might never read a hand-written one, let alone a cursive one, when I’m gone.
My grandkids can show just a little interest or even be politely indulgent enough of granddad to listen a bit when I intone, ‘When I was your age…’ Still, I want to try something new, an alternative to my windy oral tradition. How about a revolving display on the family room wall with assorted snapshots from a throw-back data dump—the attic picture box? The challenge would be to change it frequently to compete with the current generation’s high-speed info turnover on handheld screens.
Display#1: Grampa, bare bottom up. Grampa in a buggy. Grampa on a teeter-totter.
Display #2: Grampa fishing on a lake. Playing baseball without uniforms or umpires or snacks brought by cheering moms to the Little League park.
Display #3: Grampa kneeling next to his football helmet. Grampa carrying a protest sign. Grampa in uniform.
You get the idea—parts of our life spread out, but so offered that the child has to ask before we rush to tell, providing too much information unasked. It doesn’t take much to become boring and lose your audience. Not nice. Ask any comedian who has ‘died’ in the middle of his act. Ultimately, less can be more even if it’s the captivating, vivid stuff in our minds.
It’s sad to think that we have so much information to offer, so many exciting experiences, so many educational or cautionary tales that cry to be passed along before our personal heritage gets lost in the fog of time. Perhaps a rotating wall of fame will compete with computer games for the attention if not the absorption of a grandchild’s imagination while rounding out his family history.
Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/
