DId anyone else see that shift?

I haven't blogged in who knows how long. Or, well, I guess over to the right it could tell you exactly how long it's been, but that isn't in front of me right now, and I can't even begin to guess.

Either way, it's been a long time, and now I'm back. I've decided to focus this blog to something specific: conversations with my grandfather.

My grandfather will be turning 87 in a week. He is incredibly healthy for his age, and his mind, while not as sharp as it used to be, is more in tact for his age than I often like to remember. The problem is two-fold: a. he has the habit of saying things that are most certainly a result of his generation, and b. within minutes of having said one thing, he will change his mind about how he feels or thinks or what facts are true. When he does change his mind, whatever he currently believes has always been true. Always. Without a doubt.

As my grandfather spends almost all of his time locked in his room with the TV blaring, our awkward conversations happen during dinner, much to my father's chagrin. My father, my grandfather's son, feels that he must play referee and is torn between telling my grandfather to shut up and being a good son. Sometimes he is forced to interject (I used the passive voice there because I hate to admit that often I'm the one forcing him), and sometimes I do everything in my power to not put him in a position to referee. Sometimes I swallow my pride and let my grandfather say preposterous things.

So tonight. I was telling my parents about how I received a call from the automated subbing calling system at 5:30 am for a subbing job at the local high school. I said that the automated voice told me I'd be in for a Spanish teacher.

My grandfather pipes in, "You taught Spanish today?" I have several degrees in English Literature and Drama, so maybe his shock was founded, as long as he was incapable in believe that I might be multi-talented. "Do you even know Spanish?" I should have said something in Spanish to show my level of competence, but I didn't. Instead, I continued to explain because obviously my grandfather does not understand the difference between a teacher and a substitute teacher. Now, I always go above and beyond the normal subbing call of duty; I never just babysit, and I have found that I can still be useful in a Spanish class even when the material is beyond what I remember.

"I had 6 years of Spanish through high school and undergrad. I'm at least competent in the basics. And besides, I wasn't actually teaching. I was just subbing. I handed out worksheets and then supervised them while they worked on projects. But last week I subbed for a Spanish teacher, and that time I had to teach a small lesson because apparently the regular teacher doesn't teach them much." There. That should explain it.

"Well, I think it's a shame that we -" (I'd like to interject here that I thought for sure I was about to get a lecture about bad teachers in this country, but that is not at all what I was about to hear. Not even a little. Now, sorry for the interruption. Let's start that sentence over again.) "Well, I think it's a shame that we teach Spanish to American children. We should be teaching English to the Mexicans!" It's possible that when he finished that sentence, my jaw dropped just a bit. Just a wee, tiny, little, gaping, Grand Canyon-sized drop.

I had to collect my thoughts. My knee-jerk reaction was to flip out. To school my grandfather in how the world works today. But then I saw my dad's eyes dilate a little, and his forehead tighten a smidge, and his nostrils flair just a wee little bit. So I grabbed hold of my knee-jerk reaction, and I sought a new, more passive response.

"Yes. Well, they do. There are lots of programs for Spanish-speaking children who live in America to learn to speak English. But, ya know, it's good to be bilingual. There are many benefits." There, that was calm. That was a happy medium, right? I hoped....

"I'm bilingual, ya know!" he said proudly. Technically, he means he grew up in a household where Italian was spoken on a regular basis, and that he still knows how to say certain words in Italian, almost all of them relating to food. Ultimately, this means he can say "penne pasta" and "mozzarella" with an Italian flair. I'm not trying to be mean; I asked him to teach me Italian about 10 years ago, and he said he couldn't remember hardly any of it, so he couldn't help me. I said none of this at the dinner table tonight, of course. He continued, "and you know, I read an article once that said that if you're going to teach kids another language, you gotta start when they're young. You know? Like in 1st, or 2nd, or 3rd grade."

"Yep," I said. "I worked in a preschool about 4 years ago where the teachers taught the kids words here and there in Spanish. It is a great place for kids to start; elementary schools are doing it a lot these days. It's hard to teach them to conjugate at that age, but it builds a very strong foundation."

And that was that. The end of the conversation. I was left wondering if he really felt that American children should not learn Spanish, or if he thinks kids should learn Spanish at a younger age, or if he actually thinks anything about any of it because secretly he just wanted to sound intelligent and opinionated and important for a minute.

So, there will be more to come. I will revisit the ones I remember, and provide new ones as they occur. I love my grandfather, but I am an opinionated intellect who believes in voicing her opinion, which is very much against my grandfather's point of view, which is "I'm right. Stop arguing with me."