Dear journal, with November comes Thanksgiving, and with Thanksgiving comes going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. You might be thinking that for a future world dictator who fights werewolves, going to visit relatives might be a step down in excitement, but if that’s what you think, then you’ve clearly never met my grandpa!
If there is one person that deserves a movie about them, it’s him. He fought in two different wars back in the day – the Vietnam War and World War III (though he warned me not to spread that knowledge around considering the government is still trying to keep the whole alien invasion thing under wraps), and still gets weekly calls from the FBI and the CIA asking his advice on wayward secret agents. Last Thanksgiving, he even let me fiddle with his fake leg. It was so convincing it even had wrinkly skin stuff and warts to match the other one! When I told my sister Sylvie about it later, she told me that I was “so gullible,” but then again, she still believes that the earth is round, so who’s really the gullible one here?
With Grandpa essentially at real-life superhero level, it has always confused me how he and my dad are related. If my mom had been from that side of the family, it would have made a lot more sense. She’s got a mean left hook. But my dad? He cries at Hallmark, for crying out loud. Maybe he got bitten by a radioactive wuss spider as a kid and was never able to shake it. At least then when my friends looked at me weird after my dad started sniffling at the Spongebob movie, I would’ve been able to tell them he had a medical condition.
I asked Randy what he thought on one of my daily visits to the repair shop. He shrugged, brushing a greasy lock of hair out of his face with the back of his oil stained hand. “I guess, even in the best of families, sometimes greatness can skip a generation.”
I thought about that a lot, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. After all, you never hear about Napoleon’s or Alexander the Great’s sons, but who could ever forget Napoleon the Third or Alexander the Even Better? By the time we got in the car to drive to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, I was sure that the patterns of history were definitely on my side in my quest for glory.
As soon as we got there, I told Grandpa about my theory.
“I always knew you were a bright one,” he replied, laughing as he clapped me on the back. “Now, where did I put that nuclear reactor…”
Thanksgiving Dinner itself was, of course, massive. From the way my grandma cooks for holidays, you’d think there were sixty people eating instead of six. Yet, unfortunately for my stomach, there still weren’t any leftovers by the time we left the table. Just as I was about to curl up on the couch through my stupor, Grandpa took me aside.
“If you have a minute, I was hoping you could go up to the attic and take a look at some old boxes I found,” he said, winking at my dad as he spoke. “We’ll be up there in a minute.”
Hoping that I might run into that nuclear reactor he mentioned, I made my way up to the attic, panting as I reached the final stairs (they really should put a limit on Thanksgiving portions). I’d been up there before, it had always been Sylvie’s favorite place to lock me into, but I’d never thought to explore. The last time we had visited you could barely move with all the boxes, but now only a couple were left, pushed together in the center of the room.
Curious, I made my way to the first one and opened it, coughing at the cloud of dust that rose as I did. Inside were all the things you might expect to see: books, shirts, notebooks, and some old ties from the nineties that were colorful enough to warrant a seizure warning. After I had rummaged through the first one, I moved on to the second, expecting to find the same sorts of things. Boy was I wrong.
I’ve never seen so many treasures! There were roller skates, multicolored pens, superhero masks, baseball cards, comic books, and even a vintage Captain Freedom spy kit. A vintage Captain Freedom spy kit! As I pulled it out, caressing the painted plastic with my fingers, my eye caught on the last thing at the bottom of the box. Almost forgotten under everything else, rolled into the cardboard corner, was an old, dusty baseball. Setting the spy kit aside, I reached down and picked it up, letting the worn ball find the sweet spot in my palm. As it rolled into position, a handwritten name came into view on the side. A handwritten name that made my heart stop. Nolan Ryan. A baseball autographed by Nolan Ryan. NOLAN stinking RYAN!
“I was wondering if that was still in there,” said Grandpa, grinning as he and dad made their way up into the attic behind me. “What a player. That man may have been the best pitcher to ever set foot on the field, and that’s not counting his headlocks.”
“I can’t believe it’s yours!” I cried, feeling my fingers tingle at the mere touch of the ball. “Grandpa, this belongs in a museum!”
“Well, I wouldn’t know,” replied Grandpa, taking it in his hand and weighing it for a moment. “But he would.” With a smile, he turned and dropped it into dad’s outstretched palm, nodding satisfactorily.
Dad rolled it over in his hands, rubbing a thumb over the smooth surface lovingly. “I can’t believe that you still have all this stuff.” He said, looking over at the boxes. “I thought they had all probably gotten lost when you moved.”
“Well, they had in a way,” replied grandpa, chuckling. “There were so many boxes. These got stuck up here with all the other junk we had. When I found them while cleaning this place out, I knew it was time to give them back to you.”
“This stuff is yours?!” I asked, turning from the spy kit to the ball in disbelief.
“I was a kid once too, you know,” he said, grinning in spite of himself. As we went through the last few boxes together, he told me about the spy kit, and how he used to use it to spy on the neighbor’s cat, and about the time he tied his bike to the back of his uncle’s trunk and the following surgery, and even about how he cried the day Nolan Ryan announced his retirement (of course). By the time we finally made our way back downstairs, I didn’t see my dad in quite the same way. Maybe, just maybe, greatness doesn’t always skip a generation. Maybe, sometimes, three generations can all be pretty neat together.
“Hey Grandpa, can I fiddle with your fake leg again?”
Dad blinked. “His what?”
Photo credit: Sabina Boyer