Legacy

I had two granddaughters staying at the house last week, one from the other side of the country who was on a road trip with her father (my son) who had to take care of some business, the other from downcountry where I don't see her nearly as often as I'd like. They're cousins, of course, the road-tripper two years younger than the downcountry girl. Some of you have "met" them through pictures, back when they were babies and toddlers. They're both in high school now. #1 is a junior and the #2 is a sophomore.

They don't resemble each other much, although there's a nearly-indefinable similarity in some of the deeper facial structures that mark them as family. They were more-or-less raised together, or at least in the same neighborhood, during their early lives, and the bond forged before their families' lives moved them thousands of miles apart has, to my considerable relief, continued. To this day they consider each other sisters for all practical purposes, and miss no opportunity to hang out together.

The older of them, #1, is a big girl — a tall, muscled, warrior princess-type, which is rather a surprise. I love her to death, but the plain facts are that she's bone lazy and has no use for sports. Good genes are taking up the slack, I presume. At least half that can be credited to her mother, who is an absolute no-kidding knockout from a family of knockouts, all of whom seem at least as resistant to age as Michelle Pfeiffer whom mom in fact resembles in an East Texas country-girl way. 

#1 has a friendly smile, a broad, open face and penetrating grey-blue eyes that always look like she's secretly amused by something, which in fact she usually is. This is all framed by a past-shoulder-length cascade of wavy auburn-to-red hair (depending on her mood and what color she decides in a given week).

#1 has always been big for her age, which condition was both a blessing and a curse in the hard-core little Texas town where she spent a lot of her time. She "developed", as they say, much earlier than the rest of her classmates, and throughout much of her elementary school life was generally the tallest of her fellow students by at least a few inches, and not infrequently by nearly a foot. At the moment, she's not quite as tall as I am, which is to say, still a lot taller than most girls.

Now, girls, as is known to anyone who has anything to do with them, become nearly as vicious a bunch of little dickheads as boys when they start through the puberty blowtorch, and older girls, girls from other neighborhoods, and some younger girls having apparent death-wishes would occasionally challenge her. She smilingly ignores them until they put their hands on her.

She's been suspended from school off and on for years for fighting — but was never sent to an alternative school because it was invariably someone else who started it. No, that's not over-defensive Grandpa saying that — it's a constant thread through the school disciplinary records. The suspensions seem to be "non-punitive" in some whackadoo "We're All Playing In The Same Band" effort to be "fair", although how punishing her for defending herself is "fair" is apparently one of those complex big-brain issues that only School Administrators have the Secret Knowledge about.

On the last occasion near the beginning of the 2016/2017 school period, according to witnesses she was talking to a group of friends between classes when a girl she barely knew came up to her and shoved her, saying she'd looked at her "disrespectful". #1 replied she hadn't looked at her at all because there was nothing to see, and turned back to her friends. The other girl dropped her backpack and grabbed a handful of #1's hair yelling something, the main component of which was "BITCH!" #1 jerked loose, turned, and one-punched the other girl (left handed!), dropping her like a sack of sand. This caused considerable angst to the staff and much amusement amongst the students who were fed up to the teeth with the "psycho" antics of the other girl.

#1 got suspended for three days. The other girl was sent to an alternative school for the rest of the year and put into some kind of touchy-feely Anger Management bullshit, her second tour, which her mother loudly proclaimed was "Just because she's black."

(shrug) I dunno, it looked like to me that #1 had managed the other girl's anger better than anyone else has so far, or at least has updated her "expectations" database — i.e., pull your goofy shit around #1 = get your ass handed to you.  I can almost imaging her laying on that hallway floor between the English and Algebra classrooms, slowly swimming back up into consciousness while surrounded by laughing people who are waiting to see if she was going to shit herself or provide some other entertainment. I suspect her first thought was, "Well, how about THAT. I did NOT know that. Perhaps I shouldn't do that again."

#2 on the other hand is a little bit of a thing, that impression mostly being the result of her gymnastic-grade thinness. She is also gorgeous, dark shoulder-length hair, dark eyes in an intense face, very dramatic, but in a petite way — standing next to her cousin she looks like a delicately fine porcelain cup, the kind that's carefully stored behind cut-crystal panes of a rich person's china hutch and almost never brought out for fear that the real world would chip or break it. 

This illusory delicacy is the most perfect camouflage for a girl who is in fact a gymnastic-trained tough girl who is hard as a coffin nail and who is, as far as I can tell, constructed almost entirely from bone and piano wire. My son used to work in high-end operations for the military and brought some of that home with him when he got out. This means she's also an expert shot with any weapon up to .308 on any platform from single-shot bolt-actions up through full-auto suppressed ARs, all of which she can build literally from the ground up. 

She's a painter and loves art more than life, which seems to be bleeding somewhat into her makeup doodling lately. She doesn't need any at all, but her mother is a master of "perfect" makeup. #2 has been following her lead, but lately has been experimenting with combining it with a heavy, high-drama "eye-wing" style. Dressed in her cut-offs, canvas boat shoes, and tied-to-cinch-it-up tshirt, she is, in a word, adorable.

Both these girls have worried me their entire lives. I've literally lost a lot of sleep over them. I know more than most how dangerous life can be and...well, the fact that statistically and realistically they'll probably be fine doesn't mitigate my "on alert" status about them at all. 

They are brilliant, curious, nosy, and have a near-black sense of humor which I have to confess mirrors my own more than I like and are afraid of nothing to a degree that borders on recklessness,. This is combined with the fact that they've suddenly (in my time-scale anyhow) jumped from being cute-as-a-bug little girls to no-kidding predators'-dream young adults. 

The two of them together are near-irresistible, a plain fact I've learned watching them as we toured around a large college/university town. They prattled to one another about which school they're going to after high school and were totally oblivious (and I totally wasn't) to the fact that every male within a two block area sustained near-whiplash from snapping their heads around to watch the girls.  Everywhere they went, there was a crowd of young men more-or-(often)-less subtly following them around.

So, it was with a bit of trepidation that I let them out in the downtown square of the college town to just go shopping and goof around for a couple of hours. When it was time to pick them up, I parked and walked up to the square to find them. They weren't anywhere obvious, but after a bit of looking, I found them just coming out of the bookstore.

I was behind them, and started to walk up the block toward them, but was beaten by a couple of scruffy-looking twenty-somethings who came out of the store nearly with them. They were wearing fashionably ragged levis and pseudo-Army field jackets, and looked exactly like who they probably were: A couple of Fail To Launch hipster-bearded revolutionaries/skaters who live in Mom's basement and would be asking me if I want fries with that if they weren't hanging out on the square hitting on girls.

One asked a question, and #2 responded in an annoyed tone waving her hand vaguely towards another store.

The twenty-something moved close to her, and I started moving toward him. It was like watching a cat twitching, about to pounce on the clueless mouse.

He said something to #2 that I was still too far away to hear, but she snapped her head up and stared at him in exasperation.

Before I could do anything, #1 had straight-armed the guy in the middle of the chest and stepped toward him.

"She's 15 fucking years old," #1 snarled, "what the fuck is the matter with you? You need to start walking."

The second guy stepped between them and said "Hey, he didn't mean anything, you don't have to be a bitch about it," at which point #2 dropped her plastic bag containing the books she'd just bought and slid her left foot back which looked completely casual, but in fact set her for a front snap kick.

"How big a deal you want to make out of this, asshole?" she asked, loudly enough to be heard across the street, her voice trembling with anger. "I'm fixin' to turn your nutsack into a jello-bowl and start screaming till every cop from here to Oklahoma shows up."

Both of the men disappeared like they were part of a Copperfield magic trick. #2, still fuming, was picking up her books as I turned and went back to my car. I drove around the square another couple of times, and picked them up about halfway down the block from the bookstore.

"Hi, Grandpa!" they yelled, and giggled like the little girls they always will be to me as they climbed into the back seat. They were showing each other the junk they'd bought and chattering like monkeys.

"Did you have fun?" I asked.

"Yes!" in a chorus.

"Good," I said, "glad to hear it. Any problems or…anything?"

"Nope," said #2, "it was fun!" She paused for a moment, and I could feel her glancing over at #1 and smiling.

"Met some boys," #2 said, "but they had to leave."

"Ah," I said. "Well, that's OK. There's always more. Just be careful. And watch your language."

Silence. In the rearview mirror I saw them looking at each other, eyes wide, hands over their mouths, then glance at me, trying to not laugh.

"OK," #1 finally said, "we will."

And we went home. I'm sure of it now; they're going to be OK when they're alone, and they'll protect each other when they're together. I slept like a dead man that night.


In Our Next Episode:  Why your echo chamber is a cult, and how to get away from it...https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult