Ask any grandfather, and he will tell you that any
four-year-old grandson is a bundle of energy.
Ask any grandfather, and he will tell you that any four-year-old also is
a bundle of questions. This
four-year-old grandson was the most energetic and the most inquisitive of the
bundles. As grandfather and grandson
played in the yard on this hot, hot and sunny summer afternoon, his little
grandchild had tons of questions. He
also had tons of energy. As the hot, hot
sunny afternoon wore on, grandfather had less and less energy, and fewer and
fewer answers.
So, it was very welcome when the bright blue sky above began
to be pushed aside by the dark, rolling billows from the west. It meant that grandpa soon would be able to
say to grandson, honestly, “We need to go inside.” What grandpa really needed to say was, “I
need to go inside. I need to rest.”
But the little bundle of questions and energy was not afraid
of the menacing black sky, or the rumbling sounds, or the flashes of light far
away. No, he was not afraid, and he had
not run out of questions.
All the questions started the same way.
“Why does,” or “why is,” or “why will.”
It was a marvellous thing that granddad knew all the
answers. Or at least he knew how to make
it sound like he knew them all.
“When I was a boy,” or “well, a long time ago,” or “you see,
this is what I heard from a little bird .. or butterfly… or doggie” started all
grandpa’s answers. Some even were true!
But grandpa was no longer a little boy, and he no longer had
a little boy’s energy. Indeed, he
quickly was running out of energy. He
was not sure he could answer many more “whys” to the boy’s satisfaction.
“Why does,” the little boy began, “the sky make so much
noise? Why does the light get so bright over there? Why do my feet seem to shake when that loud
noise comes from the sky?”
It just wasn’t fair!
Three whys before he could catch a breath! Just then, the rain started to fall.
“Why does the rain not fall all in one spot, but bounces all
over the place?”
Four! Four whys! Grandpa hurried to answer the first, before
the boy could ask a fifth.
“Why does the sky look like it is pulling a blanket over
itself?” He pointed to the thick,
billowing clouds.
Five! And grandson didn’t
appear to be even out of breath!
Quickly, granddad started off, in such a hurry to pre-empt
the next question that he forgot his usual format.
“Well, you see, it is like this.” He was too exhausted to even try to pretend
he heard it somewhere else. He was also
getting quite wet, and grandpas do not enjoy wet as much as boys enjoy
wet. Grandpas have forgotten how much
fun wet can be – wet feet, wet hair, wet all over! The boy was delighted, and tugging one way as
hard as grandpa was tugging the other to hurry him indoors.
It was a lucky thing that grandpas are bigger, even if
little boys are more determined.
Grandpas usually won the tug-of-war, and this grandpa at least was
winning a little bit. He almost had his
little bundle to the gazebo. If not warm
and comfortable, it would be dry and safe.
At least, drier and safer than standing in the thunderstorm.
Grandpa was panting, out of breath. The boy was excited, breathless.
“Look, grandpa! More
light, and louder noise!”
Grandpa didn’t need to be told. The ground shook and his ears rattled just a
second or two after the lightning nearly blinded him. He hurried his grandson inside the gazebo,
just as another bolt of lightning flashed above.
“Why does the sky get so angry?”
Grandpa needed to stem the tide of whys. In fact, he needed to use his “wise” to stop
the “whys.” He smiled to himself at his
clever play on words. But only briefly. He didn’t want to get hit with another
why. They were beginning to hurt his
head!
“That’s not the sky that is getting angry. That is the teacher.”
The little boy had heard about teachers. In his nursery, the ladies that looked after
them were sometimes called teachers, and some of his playmates in the nursery
school had older brothers or sisters that talked about their teachers. For the most part, they talked about how nice
their teachers were, but some (most often, older boys) thought that their
teachers were mean. So the grandson knew
what an angry teacher was. He just did
not know that teachers could be in the sky.
He thought he should ask why there were teacher up there.
“Why …”
Grandpa was learning.
Grandpas learn more slowly than little boys, but this grandpa knew he
had to learn fast. Before the boy’s
second word was out, grandpa spoke quickly.
“Things are a lot different up there,” he said, pointing to
the sky. “But there are a lot of things
the same.”
He picked his grandchild up, lovingly, carried him to one of
the soft cushions on a gazebo bench, and wrapped the little guy in a soft
blanket. He then wrapped his arms around
the blanket that wrapped the boy. His
grandson loved these moments, even if it was a hot day and he was feeling a lot
hotter. He was feeling just nicely warm
inside, and he liked that feeling. He
never thought to ask why he liked it. He
just did. He waited for grandpa to
continue.
Grandpa took a deep breath.
This was going to be his best answer yet!
“You see, in the sky, schoolchildren go to school in the
summer, spring and fall. You will go to
school in the fall, winter and spring.”
Grandson did not want to ask why. He didn’t want to interrupt a good story, and
when grandpa took a deep breath, the story was always good.
“In the school up there, there are only four children in the
classroom each day, and only two at night.”
Grandson squirmed, wanting to ask more, but not wanting to
lose the path of the tale.
“The four children in the day, those are the ones that I am
going to tell you about today. If you
remember, you can ask me about the other two children when I tell you a bedtime
story. Remember, now.”
The little boy nodded vigorously. He would be sure to ask. Particularly, If this story was very
good. He didn’t ask why.
“Let me see. I think,
if I remember right, that their names were Reynold, and Tommy and Flash and …
No, wait. Flash was one boy’s nickname,
not his real name. I guess I never knew
his real name.”
The little boy couldn’t resist.
“What’s a nickname?”
He knew a boy named Nick, and it seemed strange that someone else would
have his name.
“Well, a nickname is…
You have a nickname. Your real
name is Dustin, right?”
The boy nodded hard.
“And I call you Windy, right?”
“Yes, yes. I like
that, because it’s special. But why do
you call me Windy?”
Grandpa answered carefully.
“Because you move as fast as the wind.” That answer would do, until the boy was a lot
older.
“Oh, okay. So is that
my nickname?”
“Yes, and the child up there, his nickname is Flash.”
“But that’s only three.”
Dustin could count, and there were only three names.
“Right you are. Well,
there were four, and two of them were brothers.
There was Reynold, his last name started with the letter E…”
“You said his name already.”
“Yes, I did. He had a
brother, his name was Claude. Reynold,
his friends shortened his name to Reyne.
So it was Claude E and Reyne E up there.” He chuckled to himself.
“Why are you laughing, Grandpa.”
“I don’t know.
Sometimes, things just seem funny to me.”
“Why? Is that because you are old?”
That didn’t seem funny, at all, to the grandfather. He hurried on with his story.
“So there was Tommy, and Flash, and Reyne, and Claude.”
“You said that part.
Didn’t Flash or Tommy have last names?
I have a last name.”
“Again, you are right.
Boy, you are one smart cookie.”
“I’m no cookie.”
“Flash, I guess I didn’t know his last name. But Tommy, his last name was Hunter. T. Hunter.
Up in the sky, there was a Flash.
It was Reyne E. and Claude E. and there was T. Hunter.”
He chuckled again, at his inside joke as he saw the spelling
of T Hunter in his head.
“ T Hunter. T Hunder.
Thunder.”
The boy knew better than to ask why he was laughing
again. Grandpas were funny that
way. They laughed at stuff that made no
sense. The boy’s dad said it was because
Grandpa was getting old.
Grandpa thought he should add some more detail to the tale.
“His friends, they gave him a nickname, too. Because of his last name, and the first
letter of his first name, they took to calling him Thunder. So, there was a Flash and a Thunder up
there.”
Just then, the sky lit up with lightning, and the thunder
boomed, as if it wanted to be part of the story.
“So, while all these kids were great friends, they were all
different. As different as night and
day.”
He smiled to himself again.
This story was more fun for him than for Windy!
“And, even though they were in school, they liked to play a
lot.”
The boy wrinkled his forehead, the same way grandpa’s
forehead wrinkled all the time. But
Windy was thinking. That worried
Grandpa.
“Grandpa, if there is a school, and a playground, and a
teacher, and children up in the sky, how come most days I can not see them?”
“But Windy, you can see the school. Every day.”
Dustin looked up. All
he saw was the black and grey where blue had been. And he saw rain, and still it rumbled and
light flashed.
“Remember how blue the sky was a little while ago? Well, think about when you went to visit your
other Grumpy and Granny in their apartment.”
This was another of Grandpa’s inside jokes. He liked to call the other grandfather
“Grumpy,” because then, when Dustin visited that grandfather, he would call him
“Grumpy,” too. And that seemed to …
well, it seemed to make the other old man even more grumpy, and that, in turn,
made this grandpa smile. Again, and again. He liked causing trouble, just like Dustin
did. Boys would be boys, his wife would
say.
“Well, remember that they lived on the ground floor, but
there was another home – an apartment – above them? It is the same here. When you look up and see blue, you are seeing
the ceiling of our world, and the floor of theirs.”
Strangely, the little boy understood that.
“So, let me get on to the story again.
“All four of these children, they had a tough time doing
what the teacher would tell them. She
would call out, ‘focus, children, focus,’ but the kids didn’t seem to pay
attention. Like you do, sometimes, with
your mother. The lessons, every day,
required that the children listen and pay attention. That is what focus is, for teachers.”
“And for mommies and daddies, right?”
“Right.
“But each child learns in his own way.
Now, Claude E., he was the quickest to learn. And he was the quickest to obey. Older boys are the most responsible. Older boys are the best, you know.”
“Except old grandpas, right Grandpa?”
Dustin was quicker than his grandpa knew!
“Hmph.” Grandpa
cleared his throat.
“Every day, the four would enter the school room from the
rear, and make their way toward the front.
Day after day, day after day. It
was boring, especially for young boys, who can’t seem to sit still for very
long, or listen without interrupting.”
He hurried the last line, so that Windy could not interrupt.
“Can you imagine doing the same thing, day after day after
day? Wouldn’t you want to do something
different?”
Windy nodded.
“So, every week or so, the four secretly would decide to
pull a prank on the teacher. Instead of
coming in the back door, on the floor above us, they would sneak under the
floor, and they sneaked along the sky.
That’s when you see them – when they are underneath the floor the live
on. Does that make sense to you?”
The boy nodded energetically.
“Sometimes, they would sneak by quietly, then surprise the
teacher at the other end of the sky. You
and I could see them, then, flat against the blue ceiling up there. Sometimes,
they would make lots of noise and puff themselves up, big and black, just to
annoy the teacher. You know, noise, like
you do when you ask me why, why, why.”
The little boy didn’t really agree with that point, but he
said nothing.
The teacher wasn’t really fooled, though, because one of the most important things that he
wanted to teach them was that they had to learn how to live life, to explore,
and to discover the world for themselves.
So, he pretended to be fooled.”
“Do you do that, too, Grandpa?”
Grandpa realized he had a smart grandchild on his hands.
“Maybe. Yes, maybe, I
pretend things.”
He continued with his story.
“Now, even when the four were together, and not in their classroom, they did learn. Much of what they learned came from
accidental lessons. You just saw the
four of them dashing across the sky.
What did you learn?”
The boy was puzzled.
“All I saw was clouds.”
“You mean Claude. It
was Claude E.”
He laughed at his own wit.
The boy got it. He
laughed, too.
“Claude was a smart cloud, not too dense.” Grandpa knew he was on fire. He was funny today, even if the boy didn’t
know it!
“You noticed how, as he moved forward toward the front of
the classroom, he didn’t ever turn around and go backward. He was focused. But you noticed that he didn’t rush. He sometimes slowed down, sometimes rushed
quickly as he spread across the sky.
That was Claude’s way. He liked
to pause, and learn things along the way.
Now, you remember how the rain came down?”
“Yes. It was really
hard, then it just came down a little, then hard again. Why?”
This was a “why” that Grandpa had set him up to ask.
“That was Reynold. Reyne E., remember? It was Rainy.”
That joke was too obvious, even for Windy. He didn’t bother to laugh, or smile.
“Why, grandpa?” he asked again.
“Reyne has a focus problem.
He stops here, rushes there, never planning ahead. Sometimes he forgets to fall anywhere, and
other times, he dumps pails of water on the earth. He lacks focus. And that is what Claude E. tries to teach
him. Everywhere Claude goes, he takes
Reyne with him, but, so far, he hasn’t been able to teach Reyne when to fall,
or when not to fall. Reyne seems like he
is too young to learn.”
“I can learn,” the
boy insisted.
“Of course you can.
You’re smart.”
Grandpa patted Dustin on the head with his free hand, the
one that wasn’t hugging the boy.
“But there are two other classmates.”
“Thunder and Flash.”
Windy remembered.
“True. Now Flash, he
was worse than Reyne. Claude would
sometimes stop to ask Flash, ‘Did you see those beautiful trees that we just
passed?’ Flash had not. Without
thinking, he would dash back in that general direction, but would often
completely miss the mark.
Maybe Claude would ask him, ‘Can you see that tall building
over there?’ And, without thinking
first, Flash would streak over in that direction, sometimes hitting the
building in his rush forward, sometimes missing and hitting a structure
nearby. The whole time, he would see
nothing along the way. But Claude, he
saw everything, enjoyed every moment. He
saw the flowers opening their mouths wide to catch the rain, he saw how the breeze
made the leaves dance, he saw the rainbow stepping over the clouds to touch the
sun behind. Flash saw nothing. He, just like Reyne, had no real focus, even
though he rushes toward something like he does.”
“What about Thunder?
I hear him running around up there.
He must be focused, because I hear him running, then he stops. He must be finding what he was looking
for. Isn’t that focus?”
“No, that isn’t
focus, at all. Thunder, he just follows
Flash all over the place. But Thunder is
big, and slow, and everywhere he goes, he picks up more stuff to carry in this
huge bag that he drags behind himself.
That’s the rumbling you hear – all that stuff in the bag he drags, chasing after Flash. His only focus is to catch Flash, and, of
course, as that bag gets heavier, he has a harder and harder time catching
Flash, so he rumbles along longer and longer, never sure where he will go
next. And you hear his rumbling longer
and longer.”
“So, Grandpa, if they all focused, then, they would all go
in the direction they wanted, but they wouldn’t have to rush. They could keep going, as hard as they could,
but they could also stop to enjoy things sometimes?”
Grandpa was happy with his grandson. He roughed his hair, gently.
“Boy, I don’t even know why your mom and dad want to send
you to earth school. You’re so bright
that you should be going to school up there.”
He pointed to the heavens. “You are bright as the stars in the sky’s
night school. Or the moon. Maybe, if you focus really hard, you will be
as bright, someday, as the sun itself.”
“I am a son, already. Daddy calls me “son.”
That’s very true,” laughed Grandpa.
“So, then here’s the good news, for you. That school that Reyne E and Claude E and
Thunder and Flash go to. That’s the
school that you belong too, as well.”
“Grandpa, that’s foolishness.”
It was his grandma’s favourite line around Grandpa.
“That’s silly. I’m in
nursery school.”
“Oh, yes. That’s
true. But you are also in another
school.”
He picked up a blue crayon that had been left in the gazebo. Carefully, he looked around, to see that
grandma was not looking. Then he wrote
out four letters on the gazebo wall. His
grandson gasped! Surely, he would be
blamed! He looked around, too. More anxiously than Grandpa, because grandma
would punish him, for sure. Then, he
looked at the four letters.
A. S. K. Y
“What does it say, Grandpa?”
“Well, it says two things.
First, it says A sky.”
He pointed to the first one-letter word, and then to the
second three-letter word.
“That’s where the six children – the two in night school and
the two in day school – go to class.”
“How can I go to A sky school?”
“You don’t. You go to
this one.”
And he pointed to another three letter word and a one-letter
word.
“You go to the school of Ask Y.”
With that, he laughed out loud, rumbling as loud as the
thunder.
Dustin shook his head.
“Boy, Grandpa must really be getting old,” he thought.
He knew Grandma would agree.
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