Stephan Rue Verdi, 103 and not more than 99 pounds dripping wet, lived up to his billing. He was as formidable a talker as she’d ever encountered. But she didn’t find him all that boring. When his great-granddaughter judged the old man’s narrative skill, she didn’t have Michaela’s experience with Ned to use as a standard.
“When I was a child,” old Stephan would begin, and she’d murmur at him to let him know she was listening (but that wasn’t enough, she had to sit down right beside him where he could look at her without effort), “when I was a child, things were different. I can tell you, things were very different! I don’t say they were better, mind — when you start saying they were you’re doddering — but they were surely different.”
“When I was a child, we didn’t have to live the life these children live, poor little things. Up every morning before it’s even light yet, out in the orchards and the vegetable gardens working like poor dirt farmers by five-thirty most of the year… and a choice… ha! some choice!… between running around the blasted roads and doing calisthenics for hours, or chopping wood, come the time of year there’s nothing left to do in the way of agriculture. And then the poor little mites get to listen to the family bulletin while they eat their breakfast… when I was a child, we linguists lived in proper houses like anybody else, and we had our own family tables. None of these great roomfuls of people like eating in a cafeteria and everybody all jumbled in together like hogs at a trough…”
“The family bulletin, Mr. Verdi,” Michaela prompted him. He tended to lose track.
“Oh, the bulletin, now that’s very very important, the bulletin! That’s a list the kidlings have to face every morning while they try to eat, with everything on it they have to do that day and everything they didn’t do or didn’t do right the day before… Poor little mites,” he said again.
“Hmmm,” said Michaela. He would settle for “hmmmm” most of the time, since he preferred to do all the talking himself.
“Oh, yes! ‘Paul Edward, you’re to be at St. Louis Memorial at nine sharp, they’re operating on the High Muckymuck of Patoot and he won’t let them touch him unless there’s an interpreter right there to pass along his complaints.’ ‘Maryanna Elizabeth, you’re expected at the Federal Court house from nine to eleven, and then you’re wanted clear across town at the Circuit Court — don’t take time for lunch, you’ll be late.’ ‘Donald Jonathan, you have three days scheduled in the Chicago Trade Complex; take your pocket computer, they’ll expect you to convert currencies for the Pateets!”
“My word,” Michaela said. “How do these children ever get to all those places?”
“Oh, we’re very efficient. Family flyer, great big thing, revs up outside at 8:05 on the button — the five minutes to let the poor little things go to the bathroom, don’t you know — and runs them into St. Louis to the State Department of Analysis & Translation, where they’ve got a whole army of chauffeurs and pilots and whatalls waiting, pacing up and down for fear they’ll be late. They deliver everybody where they’re going all day long and then bring ’em back again to SDAT at night, and we do it in reverse.”
“Mmmmm.”
“And then, supposing a tyke’s not scheduled for the Patoots or the Pateets, well, he’s got to go to school for two hours… flyer puts him down on the slidewalks in Hannibal, you see, or they run him there in the van. School… phooey. I say the kids that get out of it ’cause they’re scheduled in solid, and then just make it up with the mass-ed computers, they’re the lucky ones. Would you want to spend two blessed hours five days a week with a bunch of other bored-sick kids, saying the Pledge Allegiance and singing the Missouri State Song and the Hannibal Civic Anthem and listening to them read you the King James — not that I’ve got anything against the King James, but the kids can read, you know, in a couple dozen languages! They sure don’t need somebody to read to ’em… And celebrating damnfool so-called holidays like Space Colony Day and Reagan’s Birthday? ’Course, they do Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and such, too, all that stuff… but would you want to do that? All that truck, I mean? Phooey… I can remember when we still had classes at school!”
“Now, Mr. Verdi,” Michaela chided.
“I can. I can so.”
“Tsk.”
“Well… I can remember when my father told me about it.”
“Mmmm.”
“And when I was a tyke myself, all we had to do was the mass-ed computer lessons, at home, Now, the kids have all that to do AND the damnfool school for two hours! HOMEroom, they call it! Did you ever hear such damnfool stuff: HOMEroom!”
“Socialization, Mr. Verdi,” Michaela said.
“Socialization! Damnfool!”
“Mmmmm.”
“I remember what socialization did for me, young lady! Even when they tried to put it in the mass-ed curriculum! It made me detest the Pledge Allegiance and the State Song and the damnfool Civic Anthem and the whole shebang, that’s what it did! Oh, I know, they say that when the kids got nothing but the mass-eds they started to act strange and their folks didn’t feel like they were normal kids… I’ve heard that. I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Mmmmmm.”
“Poor little things. You ever heard Mr. Hampton Carlyle stand up and recite all the verses of Hiawatha at you, little lady?”
“All the verses?”
“Well, it took him a week, you know. Including the gestures… You’re blessed if you never had to go through that, let me tell you. And they’re still doin’ it to the kids, to this day! Oh, and then there’s Artsandcrafts! Whoopee, let’s make a little basket out of paper for the Spring Pageant and stick it full of paper flowers! And there are Special Activites… Oh, I declare, Mrs. Landry, it’d gag a maggot. It’s out of the Middle Ages, that’s what it is.”
“Mmhmmm.”
“When I was a child, I had my work to do. I’d interfaced with an AIRY, and I had to know that. And I had Basque, and one of the Reformed Cherokee dialects, and I had Swedish, and I had Ameslan.”
“Ameslan?”
“American Sign Language, girl, don’t they teach you anything? I had all that, and I had my mass-ed lessons to get, and I had to help out around the place. But I had time to play, and I had time to lie up in a black walnut tree and just dream once in a while, and go wading in the creek… these children now, Mrs. Landry, they don’t have a minute to call their own. Freetime, they’re supposed to get. After they’ve worked all day for the government, and after they’ve gone to Homeroom — if they can fit that in — and done the mass-ed lessons no matter what. And after they’ve put in the extra tutorials with their grammar books and dictionaries, and filled their backup requirements, and after they’ve done such stuff as run hell for leather through a shower and cut their toenails and the like, and after they’ve gone to every family briefing scheduled for them for the evening… if there’s any time left, girl, that’s theirs. That’s their freetime, and precious little of it do they get. Fifteen minutes, if they’re lucky.”
“Mr Verdi?”
“What? What?”
“You say they have to fill their backup requirements. What’s that?”
“Shoot.”