Sometimes you have memorable conversations with the grandchild.
It is recommended to take notes, by which I mean the grand should keep a record of the chat, although if the youngster wishes to jot down your wisdom, that’s fine. (Do young people jot things anymore? I suppose “note taking” is being replaced by TikTok, which means your ancient suppositions and bad jokes may be preserved forever on some dread platform. So be careful.)
Anyway, the 8-year-old and I were talking the other day and the subject of Darwin came up. “Aha!” I thought — a teaching moment.
I learned in short order that she was referring to (and I am quoting the source material) “Darwin Raglan Caspian Ahab Poseidon Nicodemius Watterson III is the deuteragonist in The Amazing World of Gumball. He used to be Gumball’s pet goldfish, but one day, he grew legs and generally adapted to life outside of water, so he was adopted by the Watterson family.”
So, not Charles. But still with hints of evolution.
Despite her interest being primarily about a mutant goldfish in a cartoon, I thought we might still wring a teaching opportunity out of it. For one thing, there is an Amazing World of Gumball Wiki with detailed information about the show. So, she can easily navigate the actual Wikipedia later on when she needs to do research for a grown-up term paper. Or TikTok project. Or whatever.
But I managed to bring the conversation around to Charles Darwin and the Galápagos Islands jaunt and his thoughts on evolutionary biology. Now, my granddaughter had already heard of the theory of evolution, but despite being nearly as knowledgeable as I was, I managed to get some pontificating in, which is what a grandparent does, am I right? No special knowledge needed if you sound authoritative.
After a while, we exhausted the descriptions of tortoises and geology and mammals. We left the topic of Darwin, but the discussion evolved into theories. We like theories. It allows us to talk about most anything, and we often do. She said to me: “I want to explain to you my theory that there is no ‘now.’”
I knew I was going to like this. There would be theorizing as well as talk about language and time. It’s exactly how a grandparent and grandchild can connect. Her notion is that there’s no space between past and future. The state of the present, or now, doesn’t last long enough to qualify for existence. By the time you acknowledge the instant of the moment, it’s already settled into the past.
Now that’s not bad for an 8-year-old. She’s not quite ready for Heidegger (and I never will be), but I like to think we did a good job of exercising what Hercule Poirot calls our “little gray cells.” And I’m looking forward to our next discussion to see how she’s further thought through her theory. Then I’ll hit her up with the musical term “fermata,” where a note is paused for an unspecified length of time. Explain that! And we’ll follow with time loops, time machines, time warps, and their friends and associates.
Meanwhile, I’ll tease her mercilessly about her temporal inquiries. Like asking her if she wants a pizza. In the future. Because there is no now. Right?