Have you ever seen a grandfather advertising for work? \u201cExperienced grandfather seeks skilled or semi-skilled position, any shift that doesn\u2019t interfere with afternoon nap.\u201d Nope, haven\u2019t seen any ads. And I know why: we are already busy as a bee in the clover patch serving as the family anchor.<\/p>\n
Most of us are convinced that our grown children are still too young and far too immature to be real parents and thus must need our help. My advice is to concentrate on the smaller dependents; they\u2019re still malleable. And the younger the better: the little ones are far more impressed by a grandparent\u2019s ministrations than, say, a 13-year-old.<\/p>\n
My grandkids live out of town, so I take advantage of every form of communications I can get my hands on. Even in this age of email, that quaint invention, the telephone, still works \u2013 except with the littlest ones, who haven\u2019t mastered the art of holding onto the receiver without dropping it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written about this before, but it\u2019s worth saying again \u2013 the United States Post Office gets my vote because, for 49 cents, you can send a large number of words and, for not much more, you can include other accessories and get them all delivered by a uniformed employee of the U.S. government (kids love uniforms). You can\u2019t send a stick of gum attached to an email. A wise grandfather, besides sage counsel and family gossip, will include a baseball card, a newspaper clipping, bubblegum, or even a candy bar. I don\u2019t think of it as a bribe, rather as a way to lure the young mind into the civilized joy of correspondence.<\/p>\n
Legend tells us that Socrates kept a big jar of black olives on his desk to reward precocious students. So, I too use wiles of all kinds to encourage younger kin to rip open envelopes from me with frantic enthusiasm. The result I\u2019m looking for is, \u201cWonder what he sent this time? Maybe if I write back today, he\u2019ll send another Hershey bar.\u201d<\/p>\n
On second thought, while chocolate bars are nice and flat for mailing, they have their disadvantages in summer, so unless you\u2019re mailing from Nome to Anchorage, you might want to skip that idea. But I do try to always include something that is amusing, edible or ethically fortifying. My grandkids usually award the family Pulitzer Prize to the clippings I call \u201cPet Heroes\u201d \u2013 the collie who pulled little Jimmy out of the river, the cocker spaniel whose barking woke up a family in time to escape their burning home, the rescue dog who finds the missing child. If it\u2019s true that the gabbling geese saved Rome, then I bet there was a grandfather\u2019s letter reporting it to the kids in Venice.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s kids are fascinated by this old-world form of communication. It doesn\u2019t interrupt their TV dependency, and often yields candy or money. And it doesn\u2019t take a great writer to be a fabulous correspondent; in fact, the letter can be pretty drab, like, \u201cDear Malcolm, How are you? I am fine. Grandma says hello too. The End.\u201d (Kids seem to like formal endings.)<\/p>\n
How to outwit the smart kid who just goes straight for the cartoon or the baseball card? I include coupons. Here\u2019s a sample post-epistle phone conversation: \u201cMalcolm, did you like the candy?\u201d \u201cYes, I like candy.\u201d \u201cGreat. You know, I had another one here, but you didn\u2019t send me back the coupon and a letter, so I had to feed it to the cat.\u201d (Whispered aside: \u201cMom, where\u2019s the coupon?\u201d)<\/p>\n
I once had a 4-year-old granddaughter \u2013 well, I still have her, but she\u2019s 8 now. She loved insects. You wouldn\u2019t believe how well crickets, grasshoppers and locusts travel in the mail. My best letter, she told me later, was accompanied by a thin, flat frog mashed into two dimensions by a truck. He shipped well.<\/p>\n