Over spring break I spent the week with my grandparents Bill and Ann at their home in Sun City West, Arizona. I had previously spent Thanksgiving break with them since college is over 1,700 miles from my hometown and it is a lot easier to visit them whenever I have time. Although some may think going to hang out with grandparents is kind of lame for a spring break trip, I gotta say, I had a blast; it was one of the best spring breaks I have ever had.
For the first two nights, my grandparents and I attended some concerts at the community park. On the first night, the concert was a Roy Orbison cover band, and on the second night, it was an Alabama cover band. Although it was not music I was use to listening to, it was really fun to sit and enjoy a concert with my grandparents. It was also really enjoyable to watch all the other elderly people in the Sun City West community getting pretty wild. No joke– many of these senior citizens were drinking and rowdy, much like the college students who go to big spring break beach parties.
Besides going to these two concerts we did not really go out, we mostly stayed at home, which I honestly preferred. After a stressful semester thus far, I truthfully just wanted to relax. During this time I worked on a little bit of school work, called some other relatives, but mostly, I took advantage of that time to talk with my grandparents. I love learning more about people, especially people I am related to as it is super interesting and I feel it helps me better understand them and sometimes better understand myself.
One day while my grandparents and I were eating dinner, I just started talking about old movies, and about Clue, which we had all watched last night. This conversation made my grandfather remember a time when he was younger when he was at the movies. Apparently during a scary movie, my grandfather noticed that one of his friends, who was sitting a row ahead of him, was getting very tense from the film. So, my grandfather being a nice guy grabs his friend’s shoulders really quick, making him scream and causing the whole audience to laugh. This turned into a long conversation about how much of a prankster my grandfather was back in the day.
My grandfather can be a fairly quiet man, but also extremely funny when he does speak, yet because of his quietness and because I don’t see him super often, I never really hear stories about him. He went on to tell me about the many pranks he use to pull. He told me about this one time where he snuck a smoke bomb into the hood of his sister’s car and how when it went off, she jumped like a hurdler over a snow bank because she thought her car was exploding. While telling me these stories, my grandfather was chuckling like I’ve never seen him chuckle before and for me it was really impactful and brought me so much joy to see this side of him.
My grandmother is one of the smartest people I know and is also one of the most tech savvy people I know. She used to be an elementary school teacher up in northern New York, but I never knew the story of how she became a teacher until she told me over break. She told me about how she originally wanted to be an engineer. She had been an amazing student, always great at math and even skipping a couple grades. Yet, back then, the schools at weren’t letting girls become engineering students, so she had to pursue something else, which honestly made me very sad to hear that someone as incredible as my grandmother wasn’t able to pursue the education she wanted.
After earning a degree from Syracuse University she eventually became an elementary school teacher. However, when computers started to become more mainstream, my grandmother became very interested. When I said my grandmother was tech savvy, I meant she is REALLY teach savvy, especially when it comes to computers. Due to her interest in computers, and a little encouragement from grandfather, my grandmother decided to go back to school to get a new degree in computer science. Soon she was helping numerous schools throughout the north-country set up their computer systems. So although she never got to go to engineering school, I am so happy that my grandmother eventually could put her love of mathematics into another field that interested her.
All and all, I just love visiting my grandparents and hearing about their past and the people they were and how they became the people they are now. Although partying on a beach might have been fun, the experience I had this week meant so much and taught me a lot about these two individuals I love so much. So maybe next time you think about going somewhere for spring break you will consider visiting relatives you don’t see that often because maybe you’ll learn something about them that you’d never known before.