Eddie

My hand feels stiff and clumsy.  It feels unnatural, holding this child’s crayon pinched awkwardly between my fingers and thumb.  Well, it is unnatural, I suppose.  You’re not supposed to be able to teach an old dog new tricks.

I thought, you know, that I made out alright in this life.  I worked for 40 years.  Paid for a nice house.  A good car.  My boys, they went to school, got a good education, good jobs.  Even sent them off to college.  We never wanted for anything.  Maybe it wasn’t fancy, but we did alright.  Now, I have grandbabies growing up, learning their ABCs and 1,2,3s.  Never bothered me before that the printed word meant nothing to me.  I never needed it.  I made out just fine all my life.  You see, there are tricks that you learn to get by.  Clues everywhere, if you’re smart enough to look.  Never needed to read a menu in a restaurant -- not when I could look around and see what looked good on other people’s plates.  Didn’t much need instructions to figure out how to put things together.  And I got my news from the radio and the TV.  I never felt like I was missing much.  Until….until.

Kids, they’re smarter these days than ever.  My little grandson, he’s as smart as a whip.  So when he thrust a card into my hands one day, covered inside and out with bold black letters and demanded I “read it!”, he wasn’t falling for any of my tricks.  

“Oh, my!  Well, look at that!  But here, now, you come read me what you wrote --” he wasn’t having it.

“Read it, grandpa!  Out loud!”

“Yessir, yessir!  But grandpa, he can’t find his reading glasses --”

“I wrote it big and black so you don’t need them, anyhow.”

“Well, we’ll just put it right up here safe on the fridge, grandpa will read it later --”

“No!  You have to read it now for everyone to hear!  It’s important!”

“Why don’t you get your grandmother -- “

“Grandpa!  It’s for YOU!  YOU have to read it!”

Well, I’ve been cornered before, but I’ll tell you, this time was the worst.  There’s no reasoning, no arguing, with a determined five year old.  I sat there staring at the card.  Ultimately, my son rescued me by picking the boy up and walking out of the room.

“Let’s give grandpa a break, kiddo.” he said.

“But why?  Why’s he not gonna read my card?  Did I do it wrong?  Why doesn’t he like it?”  I hear, trailing down the hall as they go out to the living room.  Didn’t I feel like a fool hearing the plaintive note in his little voice, the hurt and discouragement.  No, not just a fool; a damn fool.  

“Kiddo, Grandpa loves that you made him a card.  You did a real good job.  But I told you you might have to read it for him.”

“But why?  I spelled everything right, momma checked.  I did spaces in all the right spots.  I want him to read it!”

“I know, buddy.  But your grandpa, well, no one ever taught him how to read or write.  He didn’t have a teacher at school to help him, like you do.”

It wasn’t a secret in the family, of course.  My wife always knew, and would come to my rescue when some form came home from the school or the bank or whatnot.  My oldest son, he learned real young that I would never read anything for him.  I  always said it was good practice for him to do it himself.  I dunno how old he was when he put it together.  My youngest, he had his mother and his brother for help with any book learning.  By the time he came along, I guess we’d gotten into a habit and he just followed right along.  I could rely on my memory for most things, and my family for everything else.

Now, hearing my son say it to my grandson, though, a wave of shame washed over me.  70 years, and I never bothered to learn.  I peeked down the hall, looking for his reaction.  I saw his little eyebrows beetle together, his lips push themselves out in a pout as he puzzled over the greatest problem he had come across so far in his little life.  Then he gave a determined nod, and wiggled to get down.  He disappeared for a minute, then came clomping into the kitchen down the back stairs in that tangle-footed, clumsy walk-run he does.  In his hands was a jumble of crayons and the same sort of construction paper that the card was made out of.  These, he slapped onto the table in front of me.

“Well, well,” I say, trying to talk my way out of embarrassment. “What you got there?”

“I’ma teach you grandpa,”  he said -- in a voice that brooked no disagreement.

“Oh yeah?  And what are we gonna learn today?”

“I’ma teach you to WRITE.”

“Are you now, little man?”

“Here.”  He put the black crayon on the table upside down in front of me.  “Like this.  My teacher says you gotta ‘pinch and flip’ it.”  He demonstrates pinching the crayon between his chubby baby fingers and flipping it with his other hand so it rests against the webbing between his pointer finger and thumb.

Now, no one else maybe would convince me, at my age, to even stay at that table.  Anyone else, it would be an insult and an embarrassment.  

He puts the crayon down in front of me.

“Pinch and flip, huh?”  I look at his serious little face.  What I wouldn’t do for this boy.  I pick up the crayon the way he’s shown me.  He rips a page of sky blue paper from the pad.

“Now you make a line going up and down.”

“Oh yeah?  And what are you gonna make me write?”

“My name.”

And suddenly, it seems like a real good idea.