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23 July 2007

The Story of Impala aka "The Epic of Impala"
[More:]
While my brother and sister-in-law have new floors installed, my nephew is staying at his grandparents' place. This means trips to the zoo, and the train museums in Baltimore and Ellicott City, and to the Walters Art Gallery and the Maryland Science Center, and of course, daily walks with the dog, Mateen, in my old stomping grounds.

One day my dad and nephew were sitting up by the playground next to the old barn overlooking Wilde Lake. There's a swing set, and a small jungle gym, and two spring animals, a turtle and a chipmunk. The boy had a matchbox car with him, a purple early-70's Impala lowrider. "Will you tell me the story of Impala?" he asked. "Impala?" my dad answered. "Why, sure."

"Once upon a time, Impala found himself sitting next to a barn by a big lake with his friends Turtle and Chipmunk...."

And so it began. That was a year or so ago. By now my dad describes it as an epic: the Impala and his friends have walked very far indeed, meeting little black gentlemen with white moustaches and self-driving EV-1's; they've climbed trees and swum and flown, chased ducks, and generally done a little more than my nephew might do on his own.

Now the kid's trying to write some of these stories down, in the form of "e-mails" written on sheets of looseleaf paper and slipped through the gap beneath the door to my parents' room. He writes a pretty good sentence, my dad says, but his spelling is atrocious.
That's awesome. Your dad sounds like a super grandfather.
posted by jrossi4r 23 July | 10:00
ahhh, I want to go be your dad's grandchild....if only for a day...

Quite a story-teller. Your folks must be super neat people. Was your dad that good when you were a child? And, the nephew does seem to be quite bright too. What a family!
posted by mightshould 23 July | 10:07
I made the observation to my dad that when you have a kid, you get a chance to relive your own childhood, to an extent. When you have grandchildren, you get to relive your children's childhood (and your own early parenthood). When you have a nephew, you get to watch both your brother relive his childhood and your dad relive your own. Same goes for my mom and my sister-in-law.

So this little boy is making everybody in my family younger by about thirty years.

When I was a baby, my dad would sit me on his lap and read aloud whatever he was reading himself, be it a newspaper, magazine, book, instruction manual, or map. He would point at the words as he read about the unfolding Watergate scandal or about the origins of cryptanalysis or about the Sidney Bechet record on the turntable. My brother has done the same with my nephew. We were all early readers.

I guess my parents are super neat.
posted by Hugh Janus 23 July | 10:30
Back in the day… when I was young (umpteenmillionjillion years ago) we had sit-down family meals. That’s when we’d have great discussions about things, events, some idea we may have encountered. It made the meals more about socializing and less about the food (of course, there was great food). Boy, do I miss those days. We were so very fortunate.

My Dad, who took himself from plowing tobacco behind a mule to being a dang good business lawyer ended up with a brain tumor – his mind was both his way out of the fields and his downfall… Strange isn’t it. I miss talking to him, and gaining from his knowledge to this very day.

It’s the time we all spent as a family around the table that I remember most fondly. Each of us had an opinion and it was welcome. It’s the time we share, one-on-one that’s so valuable, and I can see where your family has this down perfectly. Well played.
posted by mightshould 23 July | 11:38
That's great, mightshould. My family always sat down to meals, too, and they still do. There'd always be some discussion, often about what my dad had for lunch that day (since he couldn't talk about his ultraclassified work, my dad would regale us with mundanities). My nephew gets this treatment now; he sits in my old chair and gets the same perspective on conversation I did.

I was telling a friend how we would wait 'til my mom picked up her fork to start eating, and until she finished eating and stood up to stand ourselves; we'd say "excuse me" when we left the table, we'd all help clear and clean the table and dishes, and it was unacceptable to finish dinner without thanking my mom for cooking. My friend was dumbfounded. "You never ate with the TV on?"

Well, maybe when there was a Terps or Redskins game on we'd tilt the TV so we could all watch, and sometimes we'd watch "Life on Earth" or "Nova" if dinner was late. But that happened only a few times a year.

By the way, I'm sorry to hear about your dad, mightshould. I realize when these things come to pass I'll miss the exact same thing most of all; I never want to stop learning from my folks.
posted by Hugh Janus 23 July | 12:02
Wow, your description of table manners sounds so like ours. Almost the exact same. And, we always thought that was how everyone had their meals. I remember being so surprised when I went home with friends and found they didn't do this...
Oh, and thanks for mentioning my dad. He was still "young", and missed out on many years of his grandchildren. But, the oldest nephew did take from him his love of the water, and decided to become a ship's engineer. So, it does live on in following generations, you just never know how it will show up. That's the neat thing for your family - there will be many such generational hand-me-downs.
posted by mightshould 23 July | 12:16
Glastonbunny 2007 || Happy Birthday cillit bang!

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