FAR Future, Episode 86: Generation 3

I’ve finished up the first draft in real life, but even at two posts a week it will still be a while… and I’m not going to put up two posts every week…

Saturday, June 28, 2036
Generation 3

The tradition continues…

Hi everyone. I'm Bobby. I found Granddad's printed blog, I guess that makes it a diary. Mom and Dad both said he would probably let me write something for it. I said I couldn't think of anything, and Dad laughed and said that happened to him the first time too. Granddad said that it happens to everyone, just not all the time. Mom said to just talk about what we do during the day, because people like to hear about that. She said not everybody lives like us, I guess she meant Uncle Kim and Aunt Christina and Little Mo and Robin, down in Atlanta. So this is what our days are like.

Me and Martina get up before everyone, most mornings. I don't know why, but we both wake up around 5:30 or 6 and we're just not tired anymore. So I go downstairs, and Martina comes in from her place, and we talk or read or do our homework until someone else comes in. Sometimes we play checkers. As long as we're quiet, nobody minds. We only woke everyone up once, in February when we got 10 whole cm of snow! Martina had to walk through it to get in the house, and she told me about it, so we ran outside and got a little noisy. When it was still cold out, we also brought in firewood to keep the heater going. Mom said we should fix breakfast for everyone, but she was just kidding. She doesn't want us getting cut or burned or something.

Sometimes, Martina wants us to make a story, so we have to go outside. That's OK in the summer anyway, because we can see and it's warm out. If it's our turn to weed the garden, we do that while we make the story. The grownups don't like when we go to the garden ourselves, but we take the dogs and there's never been a problem.

Whatever we do, when the grownups get up we have breakfast. Martina's place, and Ray's, have kitchens but mostly everyone eats together in the big house. Granddad gets out what he calls the duty roster, which is what everyone's supposed to do that day, and sometimes the grownups trade jobs if they want. If we got a head start on our job, they tell us if we have to help someone else. But most of the time, we go looking for fell-down trees for firewood. We mark the big ones on a GPS and drag smaller ones out if we can. Robin and Little Mo get to come with us sometimes, but they’re not used to how we do things so sometimes they’re just in the way. But they’re a lot of help when we drag trees out of the woods.

In the afternoons, everyone goes down to the creek. It's not as hot as last summer, but that's OK. We just take our clothes off and jump in. Sometimes the grownups jump in too, but they don't always take off their clothes. That's so weird, they have to walk back with their clothes all wet! Ours get a little wet, but we mostly dry off first so we don't squish in our shoes. Martina says the grownups are embarrassed, but that's silly. What do they have to be embarrassed about? Clothes are to keep warm or keep from getting scratched up when you're outside.

The other weird thing grownups do is spend a lot of time on computers or watching TV when it comes on. Granddad thought I was going to type this into his computer, but that's what old people do. I can use a computer, but I don't do it for fun.

I’ll have to say, he has good penmanship. Mine was never that good, even before I learned to type.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen two earlier-rising kids than Bobby and Martina… ever. But when you’re a kid, the greatest treasure of all is having a friend who’s completely simpatico. Rene and Serena and I had a little powwow one evening about them. “So how’s it gonna go down?” I asked them. “Like you two, or the Kim/Christina extreme? Or something in between?”

“More like us than them, I think,” Serena said. “Even when we were that age, the dynamics of the relationships got established pretty quickly. You just had to be looking for it.”

“I saw it,” Rene said, “but I didn’t realize what it was at first. I wasn’t thinking of my little sister being in love with Kim… I just thought she was acting weird.”

I laughed. “So we have like ten years before we need to start worrying?”

Sean and Mary, Martina’s parents, are less sanguine about the situation… which is normal for the parents of daughters. But it should be at least a couple of years before the hormones start flowing, and even they have to admit that the two of them act like a normal pair of kids. Serena told them about Kim and Christina, and the ways that Bobby and Martina are not like them, and that seemed to help.

“And when they get to be teenagers, they’ll probably start sleeping in,” Sean suggested. “Early morning’s the only time I know of that they’re not being supervised.”

“That and when they’re hunting up firewood,” I added. “But we can always put them on a different job if we have to.”

The kids will be getting The Talk in a couple of years, I think, whether they need it or not. At least I won’t have to be the one to do it this time. God willing, if it comes down to it, I’ll be around to perform the initial wedding service though.

continued…