'Slap'stick.

The following incident is one of my most distinctive memories from childhood, involving one of my favorite grandpas - and you'll see for yourself how he earned that status for himself in just a bit. Growing up, there seemed to be an awful lot of grandpas going around. Grandmas too, but this one is about Grandpa K. In India, family is really close-knit and it doesn't matter if you're the brother of a grandparent or the cousin of an Aunt to whom you're related only by marriage... it's all family and you call them by the names applicable to them. We have names for every possible computation of 'relativity' that you could think of.

Grandpa K was the real brother of my real grandmother - Grandma M, my father's mother.

Grandpa K was a lawyer and it is a universal fact that if that's your profession, no matter where you live, you make enough money to be happy. And so he was. As was his wife. They were so happy, that it made them semi-progressive... his wife was the only grandma I knew in my large family who would drink her booze, enjoy it and ask for more. Not that that made her an alcoholic or anything. Of course, everyone knew and at weddings and other social gatherings, glasses covered with white napkin around them would make their way mysteriously into her hands... the logic being that if the glass is covered and you can't see through, you really couldn't be sure what she was drinking. But everyone knew. Even I did. And I was only 6.

Anyway, to return to Grandpa K, he had a peculiar habit. And before I was incorporated into the ritual, I thought he might just be evil and sadistic based on all that I could make out of it.

He would line up all the young ones, based on seniority, and then walk down the line giving everyone a loud whack on the face. And then he'd chortle. I knew one day my turn would come and I tried to keep my distance from him as long I could help it. But sure enough, on one of our visits to his house, when the only kids in the vicinity were my elder sister and me, it became rather hard to turn invisible.

'Aha,' he said, sighting us.

'Tee hee,' giggled my sister, who was usually too dignified to be caught giggling.

'Frown', thought I.

'I know exactly what you both are here for,' went on Grandpa K, smiling beatifically. And then he lined us up... even though it was just the two of us. Then he muttered something that sounded like black magic and down came his right hand on my sister's cheek... and she squealed with laughter. And placed her hand over her cheek - because it had to smart, right?

Then Grandpa K moved over to me. Muttered the unintelligible stuff again while I braced myself for what must obviously be a right of passage into adulthood where pain must become equivalent to pleasure. Down came his right hand on my cheek... I closed my eyes in anticipation and winced. His hand landed on my cheek and I could feel something knobby on the point of contact. Great, he has warts to add to the humiliation!

But wait, the stuff is moving... and of my own volition, I find that my hand has moved under his hand and is now cupped around... candy!

Really?

That was his thing apparently. He had a jar full of colored candy, different flavor, sparkly wrapping... the promise of endless delight. He'd hide a handful in his pocket, and reload the ammunition after every 'slap' he placed on our young, innocent faces. The slaps were nothing more than a pat on the cheek - but he'd add sound effects which made it seem like they were forceful and must hurt beyond doubt.

Oh the things grown ups do to win the gratitude of young children!

Guilty as charged.

I've recently been ambushed by a horde of articles with a similar theme.

'If you could call back one ancestor - just one - from the past, who would it be and what would you talk about?'

'If you realized this was going to be the last conversation you'd ever have with the person in front of you, what would you choose to say? And leave unsaid.'

'If you could leave a letter for the future grandchildren you will never meet, what would information about yourself would you include in it?'

'If there is one episode in your life that you wish you would have done differently, how would you do it again?'

Apart from guilting me into the admission that I would be utterly useless in situations like these that require quick wit and the wisdom that probably comes with years of inner reflection, I realized another profound truth. I realized that I am a procrastinator... and well, while I'm at it, so is everyone else in the entire world. There could be a few exceptions and I don't mean to offend any hearts, but it's the truth and that's what the universe was conspiring to tell me by sending these morbid articles one by one into my inbox. So don't blame me. Blame the universe.

Having neatly deflected all responsibility for that rash statement, let me now elaborate on my train of thought. If it wasn't for the sense of complacency that 'things' never happen to us but to other people... that there will be a 'right' time that will announce itself to us for all the things that we plan to do but never get down to doing... that life wouldn't be so unfair as to abruptly end, leaving so many things incomplete, including our own stories that often times piggyback on the stories of the people who surround us... why, if it wasn't for all this cotton fluff in my head, I would have known all the answers to the questions asked in those silly articles.

Q). Which ancestor would I call back?

None, thank you very much. Don't want to have to go through heartbreak twice and say good bye all over again.

Q). Last conversation and what I would say?

I would tell the person all that I have learned from their example.

Q). Letter to the grandkids?

I'll tell them I traveled halfway across the world to be able to marry the man I love - and that the rest of the family back home cried watching the ceremony webcast from the County Clerk's office. Of course, by then 'webcast' must sound antiquated to them so I would have to include a footnote explaining the technicalities involved.

Q). One episode I would do over?

None... my life is what it is because of all that I have done in the past. And I'm very happy with the way it's turned out. There will always be regrets and I'm okay with that.

I don't want to sound smug-alive though. I wish I could do so many things. I wish I could be at home right now - to hold my mother's hand as my father gets some stuff done to him in the hospital. I wish I could tell them how perfect as parents they are. I might have hinted otherwise many times while growing up and have since told them how I have amended that viewpoint... but still, it never hurts to say it again. I wish I could push 'Record' on the video camera just this minute and get them chatting about the past... when they were real people and individuals in their right and not just my 'parents'. I wish I could compensate for their absence and instead turn the spotlight on to my husband's parents - who are in the next room - and get them talking. But I know it's difficult to spill the details of one's life to someone you already know. Which explains why a fellow Video Biographer is actually choosing to hire me to interview her husband - instead of doing it herself. And well, there are a lot of things that I wish I had done earlier... and I feel that's probably true with everyone.

Something always needs to happen... an ultimatum needs to be made... to spur us into action. To give us that final push before we actually commit to doing something we realize needs to be done. Should be done. In fact, should have been done a long time ago. I've been fortunate to meet a lot of nice people in the course of documenting personal and family histories... but sadly, it has more often than not taken a trigger to prompt that move. Whether it's an illness or memory loss, that 'warning' never fails to propel us into taking the first step. And well, it doesn't need to be that way.

When 3 hours can seem like a lifetime...

One of the challenges in creating a Video Biography is to try and capture the essence of a lifetime in say, an hour or two... or as the case was on Tuesday, even three.

My interview with the Wallers* earlier this week was to do just that. To get them to share with me a slice of their life as it used to be when they were growing up... so that I could help them document that world; a world that now belongs only in their memory. But they remembered more than that. They remembered a time that belonged to their own parents (born in the 1890s) - whether they learned of this world from stories or shared memories or from looking at old pictures, who is to say? But tumbling out came tales of one-room schools, horse-drawn wagons, and a period in world history when 'fried chicken was not like it is today, with all sorts of crumbs on it'.

We talked about the world, yes... and marveled at automobiles, vacuum cleaners, the internet, and proms held at big hotels with the most glorious dresses to choose from at the stores. We talked about all that. But we also spoke about their own private universe as well... first crushes, first jobs, college, marriage, the Air Force, parenting, grandparenting... great-grandparenting.

And I learned a lot. I learned that Grandpas, under their tough and solid exterior have marshmallow hearts. Grandmas can go back to college to get their degrees at the same time as their children. Children can know their parents an entire lifetime - and still think that Air-Force-Dad actually used to fly to Japan during WW II to get back a pineapple for his favorite 'princess'. I learned, or shall I say re-learned, that we might know people for a lifetime and yet not know a whole lot about the kind of person they are... or used to be... or how they got to be one thing after being quite another.

And no doubt their children and grandchildren... and who knows how many generations after... will learn a lot about them through this interview. My only regret is that I'm going to have to be the one to reveal the pineapple coverup.

* Names have been changed to respect their privacy