(no subject)
Jan. 14th, 2004 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elvendolla memory triggered by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tafkar:
i was in the car with my grandparents, on one of the long drives back to moscow from estonia; it was nighttime, and my grandfather muttered about liking there being another car in front of him.
i asked why, and he told me "if there is a hole in the road, the car will fall in, its lights will disappear, and i'll know to stop before we fall into the hole"[1]
next, i asked why a car has two tail lights, while a motorcycle only has one, and he said "so that if you hit the car/motorcycle in front of you, you know what you've hit"
somehow, this is one of my fondest memories of my grandfather.
i don't know how old i was at the time, but i'd guess 4 or 5 - it was before he was dug into serious work on our summer house, and i was young enough to accept both statements without questioning or realizing he was kidding. i think i was also too young to know that light bulbs go out and need to be replaced.
[1] i'm not sure how much of a statement this on the quality of rural soviet roads; this was also before an incident in which my grandfather fell asleep behind the wheel and drove the car into a lake, which happened on a subsequent drive to the baltics (and i wasn't in the car[2])
[2] my family never sent me to summer camp. instead, they would piggyback their summer vacations, allowing me to stay at the crimea/baltics/summerhouse for most of the summer, while 2-4 family members rotated in spending time there with me; for a while, they tried to do something similar for debbie, but that ended when my stepdad's sister had her kid, who is taken care of by his grandmother, taking that set of grandparents out of commission.
tafkar:i was in the car with my grandparents, on one of the long drives back to moscow from estonia; it was nighttime, and my grandfather muttered about liking there being another car in front of him.
i asked why, and he told me "if there is a hole in the road, the car will fall in, its lights will disappear, and i'll know to stop before we fall into the hole"[1]
next, i asked why a car has two tail lights, while a motorcycle only has one, and he said "so that if you hit the car/motorcycle in front of you, you know what you've hit"
somehow, this is one of my fondest memories of my grandfather.
i don't know how old i was at the time, but i'd guess 4 or 5 - it was before he was dug into serious work on our summer house, and i was young enough to accept both statements without questioning or realizing he was kidding. i think i was also too young to know that light bulbs go out and need to be replaced.
[1] i'm not sure how much of a statement this on the quality of rural soviet roads; this was also before an incident in which my grandfather fell asleep behind the wheel and drove the car into a lake, which happened on a subsequent drive to the baltics (and i wasn't in the car[2])
[2] my family never sent me to summer camp. instead, they would piggyback their summer vacations, allowing me to stay at the crimea/baltics/summerhouse for most of the summer, while 2-4 family members rotated in spending time there with me; for a while, they tried to do something similar for debbie, but that ended when my stepdad's sister had her kid, who is taken care of by his grandmother, taking that set of grandparents out of commission.
