Kinders These-a-Times

Word Count 2647



    Paul Martel's commun bings a third time before he plucks it off his dresser and answers it.  'Hello?' he croaks.  His rough voice is even hoarser than it usually is, seeing as it is but 7:30 in morning.

    'Good a.m., Grand Pa.  This is Eli,' says his favorite grand child.

    Paul cringes as she says her name and replies, 'Good God, Elizabeth, I wish you wouldn't call yourself that.  Eli is a boy's name.'

    'Grand Pa, everyone named Elizabeth calls themselves Eli these-a-times.  I'm running huge late, the kinders missed the bus and the dog got loose again.  Would you fly the kinders to school, please?'

    Paul groans and pauses a moment.  He does not cotton to his great grand children and they are contemptuous of him.  Nevertheless he eventually says, 'Oh, right all.  I'll be over in a jiff.  You owe me big time.'

    Eli chuckles, thanks him, then ceases up the commun.  He'll be over in a jiff, and you owe me big time.  Grand Pa is always using riotous, old-timey lingo like that.  He'll never get with the current.  He's too stuck in the past, she thinks as she finishes wrapping up the peanut butter and jammin sandwich she made for her youngest's lunch.



    Paul arrives five minutes later (he lives just a little up Elizabeth's street), gliding up in his hela-car to her floatway.  He beeps his horn and then waits.

    Ashley, the youngest, pops out first.  She's six.  She runs down the floatway to the hela-car, her pony tail swishing back and forth as she comes.  She's getting her mother's beautiful, dark hair, he notes.  She scampers into the way way back of his hela-car and says, 'Goo a.m., Gray Pa.  Tank you fo' da liff.'  He chuckles at this and he is sure she got this expression from him.  Her lisp is extremely cute.  He looks at her through the sun visor's mirror and her dark eyes are sparking with happiness.  You'd think he was taking her to an amusement park and not taking her to school.  He breaks out into a big smile.

    'Good morning, doll face.  The lift is my pleasure,' he replies.

    Eventually, the two older ones file out and their Great Grand Father's smile descends into a scowl.  As they make their way to his hela-car he's astonished children can move so slowly.

    They get into his hela-car.  Paul wryly notes that neither child chooses to sit in the front passenger seat next to him.  Instead they both opt to sit in the "middle" back seat.  This suits him fine.  The boy, Caje, says nothing.  The girl, Melina, mumbles a cold, perfunctory "hey" of some sort.  The lack of normal greeting does not suit him fine, but Paul holds back a biting retort and instead says, 'Good morning.  Buckle up, kiddos.'  They stare at him blankly.  'Activate your restraining bands,' he says in clarification.

    Caje says exasperatedly, 'It's called 'safing in'' as activates his band. 

    As Paul smoothly pulls away from Eli's floatway into the airvenue he can hold back no longer and says, 'You know in my day there was this wonderful expression sagacious, old people used to say, 'children should be seen, not heard.'

    Caje says, 'You mean back in cave man times, right?'  He and Melina start tittering.

    'Hilarious.  The last time I heard that I laughed so hard fell off my dinosaur, literally' says Paul.

    Ashley chimes in from the way back seat, 'Wheelwey, Gray Pa?  You hadda dinosaw?  Wha was yo dinosaw's name?'  Caje and Melina laugh like hyenas at this.

    'I had two pet dinosaurs, Sweetness.  Their names were Caje and Melina.  I had to get rid of those dinosaurs though because they were both too stupid for my taste.  Anyway, obviously that's where your mother got her names for your brother and sister.'

    Melina says, 'Jeez Great Pa, none of the kinders I know have a great grand parent as mean as you.  You're so rude and immature and...''

    'No, you are,' interrupts Paul.  'Good Lord, stimulating conversation with you cretins is impossible,' says Paul as he reaches for a CD.  'I'm going to drown out your inane prattle with some tunes,' he declares as he inserts Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle into his CD player.

    Caje and Melina groan.  Caje chides, 'Oh my Deos, Great Pa, nobody listens to CDs anymore, and your old fogey music is so corny.  Can't we listen to some flavo-music off of the hela's links?'

    'Absolutely not.  I can't stand that new flavo-music.  It sounds horrid and tastes like shit too.  It always leaves a metallic, chemical taste in my mouth.  Thusly, you'll listen to Snoop Dogg and you'll like it.  Music is supposed to be heard, and food is supposed to be tasted.  You should never mix the two, it ruins both of them.  Just listen to those lyrics.  Did you hear how he specializes in making all the girls get naked?    They don't write cool songs like that anymore.  You know, songs that really mean something.'

    Caje and Melina's faces fall and as they continue to complain, Paul turns up the volume and starts rapping to Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice, effectively drowning them out.  He pulls his hela-car into the Highestway, settling into the slow lane.

    After a minute Caje can no longer contain himself.  He yells over the music, 'Great Pa, you are the slowest flyer ever.  Everyone is passing us like we're standing froze.'

    Paul turns down the music and replies, 'Wait, give a moment to soak in the irony of that declaration and let me get this straight.  You're complaining about my speed?  I've never seen such a slow-ass kid in my life!  The way you walked to my hela-car this morning I'm surprised the first words out of your undead mouth weren't braaaaaaaaains.  Besides, that sign says the speed limit is 120 miles per hour and that's what I'm doing.'

    Melina rolls her eyes and says, 'Oh my Deos, Great Pa, you're so feeble, that's the speed minimum.  The minimum.'  She looks around the Highestway as the other hela-cars zoom by.  'I hope no one I know vids me.  So embarrassing,' she adds as she slinks down into her seat.

    Paul replies, 'Consider your selves lucky.  I've vowed not to drive any faster than my age and since I'm only 115 years old, I'm breaking my pledge by five miles per hour just to make sure you two get to school on time.  Which brings up a good point - Why are you two renaissance men claiming to be so eager to get to school, anyway?  I've seen your report cards and it's not like you scholars are tearing up the joint.  Besides you'll get more historical knowledge spending a little quality time with your old Great Pa than you will at school all day.  Here let me enlighten you in the arts with a little more classic music.'

    Paul ejects the Snoop Dogg CD and puts in Pink Floyd's The Wall and skips to track five, Another Brick in the Wall, Part Two.  He starts to sing along to the music in a comical English accent.

    'We don't need no Education. Do-da-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut.  Do-da-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut.  We don't need no thought control.'

    Melina says, 'Stinking Feces, you sound terrible Great Pa.  You sound like a bullfrog croaking.'

    Caje adds, 'I think he sounds more like some sort of broken fog horn,' and they both start giggling like fools again

    'Let's see you do better.  At least I'm on key, my tone deaf, great prodigy.'

    'Thank Deos people don't make horrendous, old timey music like this these-a-times.  If I lived back then and had to audio this, I would of had to term myself,' says Caje.  Melina nods solemnly in agreement.

    'I wike Gray Pa's mussick,' Ashley chimes in from the way way back as she rocks to the beat.

    'That's because you don't know any better yet,' says Melina.

    'Do so,' Ashley quickly retorts.

    Caje pulls out a compact mirror and some eye liner from his bag.  He begins to apply it.  Paul spies him, his eyes squinting as he peers at his great grand son in the seat behind him.  Finally, he realizes what the boy is doing.  His eyes widen and a look off astonishment crosses his face.

    'Oh-my-friggin'-God.  What in the hell do you think you're doing?'

    Caje rolls his eyes and says, 'Here comes round two.'

    Paul says, 'The other children are going to tear you up, boy.  Although perhaps I'm using the term 'boy' too loosely, in this instance.'

    'All of the frigid boys wear make-up these-a-times.'

    Paul continues to peer in disgust at his great grand child.  'In my day, it was the girls that wore make-up.  THE GIRLS.  The only guys that wore make-up were the punks, and they were the outcast, laughing stocks.  All of us normal, regular guys, we didn't pay all too much mind to how we looked.  I was definitely on board with that.  I always considered it unmanly to spend too much time preening and fussing about one's appearance.  That's what dandies and fops did.'

    Caje says, 'Yeah, we know.  You've told us a thousand times.  Anyway, it's obvious you still don't care about your appearance.  You may be the only rich person over one hundred we know who still hasn't done anything about his wrinkles, his gray hair, or about - What do you call those ugly, nasty spots all over your face?'

    Paul laughs and says, 'They're called liver spots.'

    Caje shutters and says, 'That's right, your lovely liver spots.  Why don't you do what Great Ma did?  She got rid of her nasty liver spots and ugly wrinkles, like any normal old person who had two tens to rub together would do.'

    'That's probably because at some point she ran into some very charming and well mannered children like yourselves who shamed and guilted her into doing all that vain, cosmetic non-sense.  In my day, old people looked like old people and it was all good.  If you wanted to know something, you found the wrinkliest and most withered geezer you knew, you know, the one with the most nasty liver spots per square inch, and you begged him for his pearls of wisdom.  That's why the world was a better place back then.  The people with all the knowledge were readily identifiable.  Nobody bothered asking anyone who didn't look ancient anything because they were the only people to have formed any worth while opinions yet.'

    Melina says, 'That has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard.'

    'See, another worthless thought from a child who doesn't know any better.'

    'Kinder, not child.  We're called kinders now.  It's 2084.  If you think you're so smart, how come you haven't learned to use any of the current lingo?' asks Caje.

    'Hmmm, salient point, let me try.  You are a brat, Caje.  I think you should work on being a kinder kinder.  There, how was that?'

    Ashley calls out from the backseat, 'You guyses should stop fightin'.  You're all being weally mean to each ofver.'

    Caje and Melina laugh derisively at this.  Paul is about to let loose another taut in the direction of Caje and Melina, but he spies Ashley through the vanity mirror and she looks distressed.  He holds his tongue for her sake.  He catches his own reflection in the mirror.  He studies himself for a second before his eyes return to the Highestway.  He does look like shit he thinks.  Maybe I should have those restorative medical procedures done on this ugly mug of mine he muses.

    Paul's mood becomes subdued and all four of them ride without further comment.  Paul casts a glance at Caje and Melina and wonders how come he's never bonded with them like he did with Elizabeth, their mother.  He was always very tight with Elizabeth, he still was to this day.  Yet with these two, honestly, he just didn't like them, and they despised him.

    Paul feels a pang of guilt and thinks about attempting repair this rift, but then he promptly gets a hold of himself.  Soon he is back to his old self and filled with self-loathing for even contemplating such a pathetic urge as conciliation.  He becomes reflective.  His generation, through advances and discoveries in medicine, is the first crop of elders to be relatively unaffected by the ravages of senility, dementia, Alzheimers and such.  We've never graduated to the foggy, benign, peaceful, dazed state that feeble ancients of eras gone-by eventually achieved.  Obviously, Paul suddenly realizes, this is what helped those fossils acquire a trance of mellowed bliss which allowed them to tolerate the rabid stupidity of their wet-behind-the-ears descendants.  Paul knows he unlike them, and despite being many years older than those by gone geezers, still saw the world's warts through a sharp, clear lens (and a particularly unrosey lens at that).  He still perceived every rudeness, flaw, and moronic act with lazer like acuity.  Perhaps if my mind were more dully serene, I could tolerate my great grand children's coddled callowness better.

    Yet the next moment, Paul rejects his own 'insightful' sociological revelation.  Nah, that hogwash isn't the reason why my great grand children and I aren't emotionally attached.  The real explanation is in this time when my generation has lived longer than any others past, our not getting along is just a result of our wildly different ages.  I mean I am a hundred years older than my great grand kids.  Such a long time.  Such a long time.  We have nothing in common.  It is, sadly, as simple as that.



    They arrive at Caje and Melina's school.  Those two get out and, without comment or thanks, trudge down the floatway, glad to finally be out of their Great Pa's hela-car.  Before Paul can take off Ashley calls out, 'Can I get in da front wid you, Gray Pa?'

    'Sure, doll.'

    Ashley gets out, scampers around the car and hops into the front seat.

    'I'm all 'buggled up',' Ashley says as she activates her restraining band.  Her Great Pa chuckles and they take off and head toward her school.

    'Gray Pa, would you pwese play that song again.'

    'Which one?'

    'Da Pink Maloid song.'

    Paul smiles.  'It's Pink Floyd, cuteness.  Sure thing.  Here it comes.'  Ashley starts bobbing to the beat again.

    Sometime later they pull into Ashley school's floatway.  Ashley says, 'Tank you fo' da liff.  Can I come over your house affer school?'

    She's never asked this before and the question takes him by surprise.  'Why?' he asks.

    'Gray Ma makes da most dewishes snacks, and maybe you would pway some checkers wiff me?'

    Paul smiles broadly.  'Sure, I'd like that.  I'll come and pick you up at your house after school.'

    Ashley gets excited.  'Could we wissen to some mo' of your old fogey music?'

    'Abso-friggin-lutely.  We will get the tunes pumping.'

    'OK, Gray Pa I'll see you den.'  She reaches over and gives him a kiss on his cheek - his wrinkled, liver spotted cheek, no less.  She gets out and books down the floatway, her dark ponytail dancing from left to right.

    As Paul pulls away from the floatway, he fumbles around for a different CD.  He finds the one he wants and slides it into the CD player.  It's The Kids Are Alright by The Who.  He cranks it up as he flies home, listening to it in a way he's never listened to it before.  He's happy.  He has a date lined up with not one, but two of his most favorite gals for the afternoon, he's going to partake of some 'dewishes' snacks and he is going to get his checkers on. 

    He thinks, what more could a Gray Pa ask for?  What's better than all that?

    He can't think of a thing.