Beady-eyed accountants may emerge from their grimy offices from time to time and lift their green eye-shades to contend that the Chicka-Carr combine has only five grandchildren. To that contention, I say “Bal-der-dash” and “Bah Humbug,” which are terms used with great effectiveness by John Major, the British prime minister who tucked his undershirt and his dress shirt into his boxer shorts. Actually by my count, there are nine such grandchildren. Because I have been elected to the Arithmetic Hall of Fame, there can be no dispute about the number of grandchildren. There are nine. And that is all there is to say about that.
The prevailing winds in this country start in the east and proceed toward the west. The same may be said about the sun’s progress as well. In the east, there are two grandchildren named Andrew and William Nollmann. The Nollmann boys understand all there is to know about sports. When I wish to know about Pete Reiser’s batting average with the Dodgers in 1948, both of them can reel that number right off the top of their heads. I believe that Pete hit .340 in that year. The Nollmann boys are preparing to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame after they finish college and start their careers in a Class C Baseball League.
In Texas there are three more grandchildren. Interestingly, those three grandchildren do not care a fig about sports or the results. The phrase “caring a fig” comes from another British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who uttered that expression on her wedding night to Dennis Thatcher, her British husband.
In that Texas family, there is Connor, who is a Dartmouth graduate and is now studying in Yokohama, Japan, to perfect his understanding of the Japanese language. His younger brother, Kevin, will soon be the high school debating champion for all of the great state of Texas. As everyone knows, Texas extends from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean in its east-to-west dimensions and from the Antarctic in the north to Peru in the south. And then there is a ten-year-old, Jack, who is my special and loving friend. When he was last here, his parents said that Jack and I were united by disability. Jack has a mild case of Down’s Syndrome and, as you know, my disability is that my visual acuity is zero. Jack Shepherd is an inspiration to all of us. That inspiration has been captured by his seventeen year old brother Kevin.
Colleges ask the applicant to “Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.” Kevin, without hesitation named his ten year old brother as that person. Kevin’s response about his brother is attached. From the viewpoint of his grandparents, we believe that it is a most moving tribute to his younger brother. And we contend that it is a professional piece of writing.
Now to move on, there are also Esteban and Fabian Hidalgo, who are the children of a Costa Rican couple. Jenny, the mother, helps Judy with housework and recently she has been introduced by Judy to office work such as filing and making sure that our accounts are entered properly in the book that we keep for that purpose. In my book and in the book of others, it is indisputable that the Costa Ricans are the hardest working people known to man. The Hidalgo boys are the children who won medals for their excellent play in a soccer tournament. Rather than keeping those medals for themselves, they presented them to me because I am their “Grandpa in America.” The Hidalgo boys now have a new
sister, Melissa, who is also included in this count. She is a beautiful 18 month old charmer.
The ninth grandchild in this story is Daniel Commodore who comes from Accra, Ghana. The last 14 months of my overseas tour with the American Army were spent at a major British base located just outside of Accra. Daniel’s father was a fisherman and his sister now runs a fish store in the city of Accra. Daniel can take a 500-pound seagoing creature and have it filleted and skinned in perhaps 20 minutes. When Daniel tells you that the fish is fresh, you can take it to the bank. If he says nothing, please avoid it. Daniel also says from time to time that when I approach his work station at the Whole Foods Market in Millburn, he often thinks of his own father, who is now deceased. I am deeply honored and flattered.
So there you have nine grandchildren by any count known to man. Even Donald Rumsfeld, who loves to use the word “metrics” for measurement, would agree that their number is nine. No more, no less.
The fact is that I am a very lucky person in that I have all these grandchildren and that we are on excellent terms with each other. I am delighted to see them explore the world as they grow a little older. Connor is in Yokahama, Japan, and the boys in New York may soon launch their Hall of Fame careers as baseball players after they finish college. I would not want to get into an argument with Kevin Shepherd, the champion debater in the great state of Texas, because he might eat me alive. The Hidalgo boys are fanatics on football, which in American terms is soccer. Already Esteban has told me about the next World Cup which will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, a place I know a little bit about. And then there is Daniel Commodore who is also a soccer fan. In the last World Cup, Costa Rica and Ghana advanced much further than had been predicted. If, in the next World Cup, Costa Rica meets Ghana, I suspect that I had better get out of town until the dust settles. And Melissa Hidalgo, at 18 months, is a beauty to behold.
Now the next thought has to do with old Jack Shepherd, whose real name is John Eamonn. His middle name, of course, is Irish, and is probably taken from Eamon de Valera, the first President of the Republic of Ireland. If this were a boxing match, I would say that Jack Shepherd is battling Down’s Syndrome and is winning by several points in each round. He is being mainstreamed in his school work and seems to be well liked by the other children.
When Jack was last here in New Jersey, I was feeling unwell. That unwellness lasted for the full summer of 2007. But old Jack stood near my seat and held my hands. I told Jack Shepherd that his holding my hands made me feel better. In the months since his departure to return to Texas, I continue to feel that way to this day. Jack has a long way to go and is carrying a bit of a burden. But in the end, Jack will succeed because he is everything a good decent guy should be.
There are two final thoughts that apply here. Grandparents should always pay attention to their grandchildren, because they will learn from them. And finally, and most importantly, every grandfather must see to it that his grandchildren are made to feel important. If you observe these two maxims, you are well on your way to being a proper grandfather.
By this time, I hope the green-eye-shaded accountants will now disappear into their grimy offices and remain silent. There are nine grandchildren and they are all my good friends. My metrics say that I am a very lucky man.
E. E. CARR
December 14, 2007
ATTACHMENT
Following is Kevin Shepherd’s essay:
Countless people have influenced my character, but in the end my little brother has changed me the most, without ever intending to. He’s ten years old, and has Down syndrome, which causes mental retardation and low muscle tone throughout his body. As such, my relationship with him has always been far from traditional — I am of course his friend and role model, but I’m also often called upon to serve as Jack’s therapist, tutor, and occasionally even his translator. This relationship has changed me in more dimensions than I ever expected, radically altering everything from my sense of patience to the extracurricular activities in which I participate, from personal pride to an entirely new outlook on life’s challenges.
To help Jack develop normally, a veritable stream of therapists has been pouring into and out of my home for as long as I can remember. They leave daily assignments and activities for him. As nearly all of these require assistance and coaching in some form, the whole family is active in his various exercises. I’ve never been an exception; from the encouraging nine-year-old enticing his brother to crawl to him, to the seventeen-year-old promising rewards in return for Jack’s cooperation with teachers and parents, my continuous active involvement has helped shape his development.
Our relationship, however, is by no means one-sided. Even as I sit there every day, persuading him to continue blowing on various whistles to improve his oral motor skills, he teaches me the true value of patience and dedication to long-term goals. The muscles in his mouth facilitate his speech. If he can’t speak clearly, he won’t be understood; if he can’t be understood, he may well give up in frustration on speech as a form of communication. Thus, in some part, his very ability to communicate with his peers depends on me sitting down with him each day, and convincing him again and again to continue blowing his whistles. Not surprisingly, it then brings me tremendous pride to see his speech becoming sharper and clearer, and to know I’ve contributed to such a critically important part of his development as a person. As we work, Jack also teaches me about perseverance. Just a few months ago, I came across him sitting in the hall, trying over and over again to pronounce the “r” in “ear.” His small mouth and muscle tone make this nearly impossible. The whistles we blow help, of course, but can only do so much … watching him continually struggle against and overcome barriers that are literally encoded into his genes has taught me a new definition of determination, and a new understanding of adversity. Realizing that something as simple as blowing whistles can have a positive impact on someone else’s life heavily influenced my decision to join the “Garden of Friends” club at my high school. It’s a student-run outreach club for the school’s kids with disabilities; we see movies together, go bowling, have holiday parties, etc. I discovered a few meetings into my membership that I was the only “typical” boy who regularly attended, but it didn’t matter-in fact, it made it even more imperative that I stay in.
Jack affects far more than my sense of pride and the clubs that I join, and more than a new appreciation for perseverance. He’s given me the courage to not let slurs pass unchallenged. When others use the word ‘retarded’ pejoratively, I have no reservations about correcting them. From my friends to their parents, from my English teachers to my debate judges, when I hear that word, I let people know that I have a brother with Down syndrome, and that ‘retarded’ is not a suitable synonym for ‘bad.’ I’ve almost certainly lost debate rounds because I’ve challenged the judge on this beforehand, but those mild repercussions were more than outweighed when once, I encountered one of the offending judges in mid-conversation. He said, “that case was so … “, glanced at me, “… terrible”, he concluded, smiling. I had acted differently because of my experiences with my brother, and that judge had learned something from me. And from Jack. That’s the most I can ask for.
Kevin Shepherd, Dec 2007
~~~
Ughhhhh
I can’t believe I’m about to publish my college admissions essay on the internet. I’ve saved this essay for one of the very last to be published on this site for that exact reason. I guess I could skip it, but that feels like the sort of editorializing of Pop’s content that I’ve completely avoided since 2014, so I may as well see this through.
I don’t like it because to me it comes across as aggressively trite. I think I might have a particularly bad taste in my mouth about this essay because even ten years later I still remember obsessing over every sentence with mom over dozens of iterations, and I was never completely happy with the result. The output was this weird hybrid that sounded good to admissions people, I guess, but didn’t sound like anything that I (or mom, for that matter) would write normally.
What’s with that ellipsis in the middle of third paragraph? Who does that aside from tweens who think it’s an acceptable substitute for a semicolon? Why, come to think of it, are there three semicolons in 700 words? Why are a full 315 of those words stuck together in a mega-paragraph?
It was genuine, and I meant what I said in the essay, but reading it now it just feels exploitative. Like, “my brother has a disability and worked hard to compensate for that so let me into college please because ‘I learned about adversity’ from this experience.” I didn’t — and still don’t — understand adversity from a personal level. Even here, I describe witnessing adversity because that’s the closest I could get. That “perspective” on adversity itself wasn’t something that I consider an especially valuable school like Northwestern. I’m willing to immediately reprimand anyone who calls things “retarded,” sure, but “I guess this kid isn’t spineless” doesn’t seem like enough of a selling point to convince anyone to let me into their university.
I think the only redeeming thing here is that I did actually join up with Special Olympics once I was a student at Northwestern, and that turned out to be incredibly rewarding. It also felt like adding some sort of value to a community, instead of just performing duties incumbent on a brother, which I liked.
Anyway. I enjoyed Pop’s essay, and learning about two of my additional co-grandkids.
I hope to cross paths with Daniel Commodore sometime. Maybe he’ll google himself, wind up here, and say hello.