Old Man

OLD MAN

My grandfather must have been the most irritating creature on the face of the planet under five feet tall. I mean, he always had to have a special take on everything. Everything in life to him must be—just—so. According to the old man, there was a correct way of handling any task in life, and it didn’t matter if it was brain surgery, or mowing the lawn, or doing your taxes, or cleaning the wax out of your right ear with a Q-tip. If you put your mind to it, he always told me, if you would only pay attention, if you will only bother to look, you will find that there is always a God-endorsed technique of attacking any particular job, no matter how menial, how mundane, that was so natural, so intuitive, so harmonious to the innate Yin-yang of the chore itself, that to see it employed appropriately, was to see beauty itself incarnate, poetry without words, music in motion.

Let me give you an example.

“When you’re vacuuming the kitchen floor,” the old man always taught me, “push the brush all in one direction, pick it up at the end of the stroke, bring it back to the spot where you had started, and then push forward again to begin the second stroke. This way, even if the suction of the vacuum won’t pick up the dirt, the sweeping action of the brush will help to push the dirt into one corner, just as if you had used a broom. Understand?”

Or when you have arrived at your destination and have put your car into park, you should always, “…go around the dashboard in a circular motion starting with your parking brake. Go counter-clockwise from there and then turn off the fan, the radio, then check the wipers and lastly the lights. Grab the keys out of the ignition and then exit the vehicle. If you manage to be systematic like this and do exactly the same thing every single time before you get out, you will never leave the lights on, and you will never lock your keys in the car.”

Or, “…plan ahead when you wash the dishes. Take a quick look at all the different things you will have to wash. Then check the dish rack next to the sink and imagine, first of all, where each of the plates and the bowls will have to go, just so they will all fit. Always wash the small items first, the forks, spoons, knives and so on. That goes without saying. Ordinary people should be able to do this without any trouble at all. The truly gifted, in fact, will be yet another step ahead, and be able to organize the finished dishes in their minds according to the manner in which they will go in the cupboard once they are dry…but this—this step is only reserved for the truly chosen, and as sad as it is to say, I have not seen such a one in this generation or the last.”

And you know what? I really wouldn’t have minded the old man’s egoism so much, except for some strange reason, he had always felt it his mission in life to bestow upon me, his only begotten grandson, all the eons of knowledge and wisdom that he had amassed over his four-foot-something lifetime and transcontinental traveling history, having been born in China and then spent time in Hong Kong and then Canada. Somehow, he must have felt as if these Seinfeldian tidbits were actually going to shape my life or something. Yeah, right! Couldn’t he tell I was just humouring him when I pretended to listen? And not really paying any attention at all? Didn’t he see the truth? After all, I was thirteen…! At thirteen, my mind was not on the harmonious underpinnings of the Great Yin-yang; I couldn’t care less. It was on getting my homework done on time and struggling through grade seven math, and making the swim team, and wanting the girls to notice me, and not wanting the girls to notice me…

Well, maybe it was just the sheer amount of time we were forced to share together. Fate, then. My parents worked, you see? Both of them. Because of this, all the various chores around the house had to be divied up between the two of us and often we had to work together.

One time we were doing the dishes. As usual, my mind was on autopilot. I was just daydreaming about Kathleen Rind and her tight T-shirt in gym class that day, after we had finished the twelve-minute run and were just heading for the showers. She was deforming the material something fierce…