VALLEY: Making seismic waves

Lockport Union-Sun & Journal

June 29, 2009 11:50 am

— My daughter, Melissa, dropped my grandson off at the house the other day.
She asked if I'd mind watching him until she could pick him up later. She's a teacher and with the school-year winding down and tests being administered, their schedules have varied lately from the synchronized norm of a daily routine. Dominic is a middle-school student who had just finished taking his science exam.
“How do you think you did on your test?” I asked him.
“It wasn't too bad. I think I did alright.”
“Were there any questions that threw you for a loop?” I continued.
“What's 'threw you for a loop'?” he asked.
“That means any questions you didn't understand — other than mine” I explained.
“Maybe a couple.”
Thinking I could show him how smart his grandfather was, I asked him to test me on one of the questions from the exam. I figured I'd let him experience genius — first hand. I pride myself in being almost as smart as a 12-year-old.
“OK,” he said, “here's an easy one. What type of wave emanates from an earthquake?”
“Well, ah ... what’s ‘emanate’ mean?”
“You can't ask questions when you're taking a test.”
“I knew that. A tidal wave? No wait — a quaker wave? How about a wave goodbye to your house? Hey, let's go outside. I'll show you some worms.”
“Worms?”
“Yeah,” I said nonchalantly, trying to shift gears, “we'll all be up on the river in a week or two — and, so, I thought I'd save some money on the bait by picking our own worms. No sense paying for them when they're free. Haven't picked my own worms in years, but I haven't lost my touch. In fact, it seemed a lot easier than I remembered.”
Once outside, I pointed to the old coffee can that I'd stored them in and told him to take a look. Slowly lifting the lid, he peered inside, looked up and asked, “You said they were easier to pick than you remember?”
“That's right. I must be getting quicker or the worms are getting slower. I like to think of it as experience being the reason. Whatever, I snatched them up and threw them in that can before they even knew what hit them.”
“I think I know why it was so easy. Papa, did you know that there's nothing in here but a bunch of little brown twigs?”
OK, there WERE some twigs in the can. But there were worms in there, too. OK, maybe there were only four worms in the can. OK, truth is: There weren't any worms in the can, but I thought there were.
Perhaps an earthquake opened the can and set them free. Hey, you never know — the container could have been picked up by that earthquake wave and shook the worms out. Off they went — never to be seen again.
My grandson didn't buy that baloney, either.
Trying to save face in front of him, I suggested that maybe we could use the twigs as bait since they “kind of looked like worms.”
He responded with “What are we going to catch, tree limbs that kind of look like fish?”
And I thought I was as smart as a 12-year-old.
That's the way it looks from the Valley.
Tom Valley is a Medina resident. His column runs every Thursday. Write to tvalley@rochester.rr.com.

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