In Da Club (Sam's Club)

I've long been an ardent defender of the Sam's Club. The monument to American commercialism is indelibly linked in my mind to many positive memories.

Whenever my mom would take Ryan and I there as children, we would get a pizza. Not the Sam's Cafe pizza, but rather one of the club's frozen pizzas, which my mom would have the Sam's Cafe cook while we shopped - it's kind of like when you catch a fresh Marlin off the coast of Belize and take it to the resort chef to prepare. I'm fairly certain that these frozen pizzas were identical to whatever they were slinging behind the counter, but this is how things were always done.

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When I was little, I used to love dinking around in the electronics section of the Sam's. Seeing as it was the electronics section of a bulk household products store in the mid-90s, I mostly dinked around on clunky Dell and Gateway (remember Gateway? Only 90s kids will get this. Man Reddit is a cool and vibrant community) desktops. You could usually play minesweeper or look up the cost of mulch or something.

At some point (I'm assuming after the internet became widespread but before the proliferation of firewalls to keep perverts at bay) they started to lock the PCs, and you could only dink on them if you asked a Sam's Club employee to unlock it for you.

This didn't sit well with a young me, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Half the work was done for me. The username was already inputted into the login screen - something like "BulkDrone2921." I just had to put my child brain to work to figure out the password.

I furtively began typing: s-a-m...

The password was "samsclub." An eight-year-old child cracked the code on his first try - their Windows Calculator program was all mine.

I assume this is still the case and if you want to gain access to Sam Walton's millions, you need only go to some Arkansas credit union and drop that password.

Pictured: Me at 10

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Sam's Club was also weirdly formative in my knowledge of human sexuality. (As I'm sure it was for most of you.)

My mom, aunt, cousins, Ryan and I were traveling somewhere between Ft. Worth and Houston and stopped at a Sam's for some reason. Why my mom and sister would take a van full of kids to Sam's on a road trip, I can't fathom.

When we got out of the car, my aunt slipped something into my cousin's back pocket to embarrass him.

(Side note: My aunt used to make a cottage industry of embarrassing my cousin. It's one of those things that was hilarious at the time but now seems odd.)

The object was wrapped in paper with pastel packaging. I had no idea what it was, but my 15-year-old cousin wanted to no part of it - much to my aunt's amusement.

I asked repeatedly for the object to be identified, but was only told, "You'll know when you're older."

My aunt was right, I'm 24 now and I know what it is. It was a feminine hygiene product. Pretty weird.

(I wonder if anyone else on that trip remembers this occurrence? Almost certainly not, right? It's the kind of thing you'd accused someone of making up, but how on Earth could I have that memory if it didn't happen? Aliens?)

That same car trip I revealed to my assembled family that I knew what "gay" was. I can't remember the context exactly, but I think my mom and aunt were cagily talking about a gay person and I, in my juvenile wisdom, attempted to jump into a conversation above my station by blurting out that I thought a friend of mine was gay. (I was around the third grade, so said friend could very well have been Macklemore.) I really had no justification for saying this, it was just something I could say to sound more sophisticated I suppose?

My mom and aunt both whipped their heads around to the backseat and asked, "What do you think that means?"

I promptly replied, "It's a boy who wants to marry other boys."

Their eyes narrowed, "Where did you learn that?" they asked.

My poor cousin, probably still smarting from the sanitary napkin incident, was assuredly sweating in the seat beside me.

"He told me," I said, playing the part of the stool pigeon.

My aunt spent a few minutes berating him before she and my mom both turned to assure me that "gay" meant happy - the well intentioned parental reprimand that leads to children tossing out "gay" as an epithet and then deflecting any criticism by claiming they meant "happy."

Also, if you're trying to convince a child that a word doesn't mean what they think it means, it's probably best not to hem and haw like Jeff Goldblum when you're correcting them.

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My only negative memory of Sam's Club comes from my adult life. At this point I was established as a member in good standing with my very own Club Card, so it was with confidence that I strode to the entrance of the club in Lubbock.

Now, in every Sam's that I've been to outside of Lubbock, one enters freely and shops, only utilizing the club card upon checkout.

Not so in the heavily guarded paradise that apparently is the Lubbock Sam's.

As soon as I stepped foot in the building, a wizened but terrifyingly spry old man rushed at me.

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(This was the second time in my life that I was pursued by an octogenarian. The first was when I tried to sneak into a screening of Borat the day before my 17th birthday. They sold me a ticket, but the Methusalean guard would not grant me passage to the theater. With the cunning only a 16-year and 364-day old can muster, I promptly returned the ticket and purchased one for another movie. I entered the theater unmolested and waited ten minutes or so before trying to join my friends in the Borat screening.

Little did I know, the guard had been eyeballing me and immediately leapt to stop me. Six steps in, he busted comically and yelled for his teenage stooge to stop me while he recovered. Not being the type to flee from any authority figure, be they ancient annoyance or clearly bored sophomore, I remained in place. The old man rested on a chair and summoned the manager to come corral me. She asked to see my ticket and I produced one for a movie that wasn't Borat [The Guardian, possibly]. In the process of pulling the ticket out, my pocket bible was jarred loose and fell on the ground.

As I gathered my scripture, she told me I had to leave, so I texted my friends about the situation. My buddy, Nick, came barreling out the theater to see what the issue was. When I related the story to him, he was incensed, "THAT'S NOT RIGHT!!! You didn't go in the theater, they can't kick you out!!!"

I had to admit, Nick had a point. That old man had miscalculated, he didn't know the kind of man he was dealing with (Nick, not me, he had accurately judged my level of spine and found it wanting).

Emboldened by Nick's righteous anger, I approached Teen Stooge #2 at the box office and demanded a refund for the ticket. The manager (later named "Dragon Lady") burst from her lair in the back of the box office and snatched the ticket from the teen's hand.

"You can't get a refund on this, you snuck into a different film," she said, sneering.

"No he didn't!" Nick interjected.  "He never actually went into the theater. How do you know he wasn't just bringing me something?"

The Dragon Lady reeled at Nick's logic assault. She turned to me, nostrils flaring with dormant brimstone.

"Were you trying to sneak in?" she asked.

All hopped up on Nick's vigor, I evaded.

"I didn't sneak in, if that's what you're asking. He ran at me while I was just in the hallway," I replied.

"Give him a refund!" Nick demanded. "And give me one too."

Dragon Lady fumed. She wouldn't capitulate this easily.

"No. No refund."

I had expected as much and started to turn back to the car.

"I'll give you a gift card, and that's it."

We won! We live in a universe where a Cinemark is apparently bound by technicalities pointed out by 17-year-olds.

As the Dragon Lady gave us our cards, she made me promise never to try to sneak into an R rated film again.

At this point I was satisfied and refrained from pointing out that in order to sneak into an R rated movie, I would have to try at that same theater at some point within the next four hours.

In the time immediately after this escapade, I felt somewhat bad. I did technically try to break the rules, but then again, they did sell me a ticket in the first place, so who's to blame really? As I've aged it just seems sillier and sillier. I do feel bad about the old man busting, but he didn't need to come at me like I was Charlie rushing his buddies. He'd have been just as effective stopping me with a yell. Where was I going to go? The Sunday matinee screening of Borat with literally three people in it?

No. Now I look back on that incident with a sense of righteousness. If they are going to deny me entrance to the film on the cusp of 17, then I was right to demand my money back for never straying beyond the cusp of the theater. An eye for an eye, a nitpick for a nitpick. Also, Nick will be a father soon. I hope one day his child gets to see him shining as brightly as I saw him shine that day. The babe will respect him forever.)

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The codger caught me and demanded to see my Sam's Card. I dug around in my wallet and realized that I didn't have it on me. He coldly pointed me to the member station. As I headed that direction, he turned to his buddy manning the exit, another codger, and cracked a big smile. He was elated to have gotten one over on this bearded ne'er do well - no doubt attempting to sneak into the Sam's and get a great rate on some Maui Jim's or a seven gallon box of goldfish.

I had them print me a new card and showed it to my nemesis. Then I went and bought tires for my girlfriend with her credit card. TURNS OUT IT WAS AN INSIDE JOB!!! He was right to suspect me all along.

That night, I went to my friend, Jordan's, house for dinner with his family. I was still reeling from the assault on my good conscience by the old man from earlier and, as I prepared to launch into the story, who should appear, but THE SAME OLD MAN! He is my friend's grandpa or step-grandpa or something!

In a further twist, Jordan worked at the movie theater at the same time as the guy from earlier! He knew him too!

Time is a flat circle.

(Jordan's grandpa didn't recognize me.)

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All that to say that I love Sam's. I like samples, I like bargains and I especially love the Sam's Cafe. I'm a bit of trend-setter there. One of the best kept secrets in the culinary world is the Sam's Cafe hot dog combo. For $1.50 you get a Nathan's dog and a Coke. For $2 more, you get a jumbo slice of pizza. Order them both and you get what I like to call the Big Dawg Double Dip.

I did this once and all three men behind me in line got the same thing. I am an inspiration.

So it was that I turned to Sam's last week when I needed new tires.

As great as Sam's is, buying big ticket items is a hassle. For reasons unknown to me, they don't accept   Visa credit (though they do at the gas pump). This means that you have to get whatever you're buying priced and then run to a Walmart and buy a gift card of that value with your credit card.

Since I was buying tires, I needed to obtain a cool $800, which I did.

I ordered my tires, and, as they were installing them, I enjoyed my Big Dawg Double Dip and contemplated my gift card. Just how much could $800 get you at Sam's?

Well readers, we're about to find out!

You could buy 228.6 Big Dawg Double Dips. This is, conservatively, 204,597 calories, or 58.45 lbs of fat. Guys, don't eat 228.6 Big Dawg Double Dips.

You could buy 80 containers of Axe body wash (endorsed by VCU coach Shaka Smart).

You could also get 80 pocket hoses, or mix and match to make an outdoor shower.

You could buy any number of terrible books. Who buys books at Sam's? That's like buying lumber at the barber. 

At this point in my investigation, I realized that most of the stuff Sam's sells is pretty cool and available for a reasonable price and I was wondering if this bit would pay off. I thought I may have to pad it with unrelated stories to make it interesting (you were right, past me).

Then I found this.

That's right you guys - a three liter plastic bag of pre-mixed Chili's On the Rocks Margaritas. 

For only $11.28 (which I have paid for a pint of rarer beer), you can purchase enough booze to kill two people. This is the kind of dangerously stupid excess I had been hunting for the past hour. It's even Chili's branded! The only thing that would make it better is if Guy Fieri's mug was on it giving me big thumbs up for the purchase he knew I would be biologically incapable of not making. 

Instead of getting new tires, I got 71 bags of Chili's marg. I hope my parents forgive me. 

I Saw a Movie (It was Grand Budapest Hotel)

My friend, Daniel, and I went to an advance screening (if you don't live within the vicinity of the four theaters that it opened at last week) of The Grand Budapest Hotel last night. I now have unique foreknowledge and therefore will distribute it to all of you in order to grow my #brand.

As many reviewers have already noted, The Grand Budapest Hotel is the most mannered Wes Anderson movie to date. Being both a longtime footsoldier in Anderson's toy army and bound by pride of old alma mater I was naturally delighted by this. I know that Anderson's meticulous staging can grate on people, but I've never found it anything but charming.

The fantastical set decoration also makes sense within the narrative, as the bulk of it takes place as a story within a story within a story - each level with progressively less real-world verisimilitude. The movie is a meditation on old-world romantic elegance, and the way it was irrevocably extinguished by the rise of fascism. This progression from resplendent to ordinary to sad is ably communicated by the presence or absence of trademark Anderson whimsy on screen.

The story centers around M. Gustave, the dandyish and efficient concierge at the opulent Grand Budapest Hotel, and his lobby boy, Zero, as they try to run the hotel and simultaneously elude a pack of nefarious heirs, headed by Dimitri (who tips his villainous hand immediately with his facial hair choices).

It's easily the most plot heavy live-action Anderson film since Bottle Rocket. It eschews the now expected "characters wander around chasing a macguffin while discovering themselves" vein of storytelling and instead embraces a Fantastic Mr. Fox-esque caper atmosphere. It's Anderson's most violent film - there are shootings and stabbings and the requisite foul end of a pet - with these occasional forays into the grotesque reminding the viewer that bad things are coming everyone's way in the 1930s. There's even a chase sequence (albeit one rendered in stop-motion style).

Zero gets a romantic subplot with the local pastry chef, Agatha, but it's M. Gustave's movie and Ralph Fiennes (whose name I'm still not sure how to pronounce) steals the show.

Fiennes as Gustave is effortlessly charming, but beneath his posh exterior there is an undercurrent of world-weariness, a weariness that often manifests itself in the form of one of my favorite jokes - the artful and judicious deployment of unexpected profanity. He's an atypical Anderson character in that he's entirely confident in who he is, which helps the plot maintain its brisk pace. He's also the bravest character since the Bond Company Stooge in The Life Aquatic.

The simmering undercurrent of violence and melancholy comes to a head at the end of the film and lends a real world honesty that's somewhat unexpected in an Anderson film. Rather than using a heightened reality to explore emotional truths, in Grand Budapest Hotel, the sweetness of his fictional country of Zubrowka is undercut by the brutal truth of history.

Go see the movie, it is good.

Kyle's Wes Anderson Film Rankings

1) The Royal Tenenbaums
2) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
3) Rushmore
4) Bottle Rocket
5) The Darjeeling Limited

Unranked
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Moonrise Kingdom
The Grand Budapest Hotel

(I find my opinion on Anderson films varies with each viewing, and I've only seen the unranked movies once. I feel I can't provide an accurate assessment until I see them again.)

I Visited My Grandparents (Money pt. 2)

I visited my grandparents last Thursday, not the ones that I live with, but my dad's parents. I was going down to New Orleans for the weekend and staying in Houston overnight. I try to visit them whenever I go to Houston, but I don't always have the opportunity.

I left work around 3 p.m. and started trucking down 45. I'd texted my dad about my plans and he'd told me to call my grandmother and tell her that I was coming. Being the neurotic that I am, I opted to put this off until I was 90 miles outside of Houston. I'd been feeling bad lately because I'd forgotten to call my grandmother on her birthday or to thank her for my Valentine's Day card, a call to announce an unexpected visit seemed like a distinctly selfish use of Alexander Graham Bell's invention. (I know this is a contested history fact).

I called her from a Buc-ees while being fleeced for gas to the tune of $3.30 and told her that I'd be stopping by.

She was excited at first, but asked for confirmation that I was coming that night and not on Friday. I reaffirmed the schedule and she paused momentarily and said, "Oh, I wish I had known."

This stutter only deepened my antagonistic relationship with the telephone.

She continued, "Our lawyer is coming over tonight to work on our will. He's supposed to be here at seven."

I mumbled and stumbled a bit. Granny asked if I was going to be here any other time that weekend. More mumbling and stumbling ensued and I finally just offered to swing by for a few minutes and say hello. Granny said she would like that, but cautioned that it was going to be "one of those nights."

I should mention here that my grandfather was in the hospital last week. He's getting older and his heart isn't in great shape. He appears to be better now, but both my and the lawyer's visit were being conducted under the shadow of that event.

I didn't really know what the proper course of action would be. I didn't know if I would be intruding on something I wasn't meant to privy to. It was, after all, a discussion of both mortality and finances, two things that Gregorys don't discuss and rarely have any reason to discuss. My girlfriend is always mesmerized by this. It's baffling to her that I've made it 24 years so far without any truly significant losses in my life. This is, obviously, a blessing, but it's one that I know will not last forever.

Mostly, I thought about how much I didn't know about my grandparents. I had only the vaguest notion of their life before I came into this world, and I'd never really bothered to ask about it because I just assumed that there would always be time for that. I figured that I had better try to learn what I could that night, assuming the atmosphere wasn't too bleak.

I drove on. I tried to take my time traversing those 90 miles, in hopes that the visit with the lawyer would be perfunctory and maybe he'd be gone by the time I arrived, but that wasn't the case.

I pulled up in front of their house and saw his truck in the driveway. I peered into the kitchen window and saw the three of them seated around the table, with the lawyer scribbling on the yellow pad named for his profession.

After a short game of who's on first with the front and back doorbells, the lawyer, my dad's friend Dean, let me in and I sat with them at the table.

This appeared to be uncomfortable for everyone but my Paw Paw. Dean tried to make small talk with me, I tried to small talk back, but was mostly interested in talking to my grandparents. Granny just kind of sat in her chair.

My natural disinclination toward idle talk eventually turned the conversation into one between Paw Paw and Dean, and I joined Granny in kind of sitting in my chair.

Paw Paw talked a bit about his health and ran through a litany of doctors that he had visited, adding in little backstories about why he liked or didn't like them. I couldn't tell you the name of any doctor that I had ever visited, but Paw Paw was running through them like he was discussing the merits of different quarterbacks. It seems that doctors are the fantasy football players of the elderly.

Conversation eventually turned toward my trip and Paw Paw's eyes lit up when he heard I was going to New Orleans. He started grinning and laughing, talking about how he used to visit with friends.

He told me a story about when he and Granny went with another couple and walked down Bourbon, popping into a bar with people dressed in drag.

"There were men dressed like women and women dressed like men in there. My friend looked in and couldn't believe what he was seeing. Then his wife wouldn't look - she just covered her eyes," he said.

Then he laughed and Granny interjected, "She'd led a very sheltered life."

(I don't know how often Granny encountered drag performers in East Bernard, but apparently it was often enough to elevate her worldliness above this other poor woman's.)

It was getting past 8 p.m. at this point, and it was clear that my stated goal of a quick pop in wasn't going to happen. I slyly went to the porch for a Dr Pepper and then recused myself to another room while my grandparents and the lawyer resumed discussing the task at hand.

I drank my coke and ate a few of the cookies that Granny makes special for me while politely trying not to listen. I caught up on whatever I'd missed on Twitter while I'd been driving, occasionally picking up on things like "DNR" and "mineral rights" from the other room.

After another 45 minutes or so, Dean seemed satisfied and left.

At this point, Paw Paw complained that he was aching from sitting so long, so he stood and ambled around the living room. Granny moved to her rocking chair and I sat in another rocking chair beside her.

I thought about what I had written about Paw Paw's time with the gas company. I essentially only knew what I had laid out in the post from a few weeks ago.

Seeing as I am now the third consecutive Gregory to earn his keep on the back of America's most efficient heating fuel, I figured that would be as easy an egress into the story of my grandfather's life as any. It turns out my romanticized notion of Paw Paw working his way up from the bottom to a comfortable position wasn't an exaggeration at all. In fact, it played out pretty much as I imagined it.

I told my brother about the conversation and he wanted me to write down as much as I can remember, so I'm going to try to do that now. I mostly asked about his life as an adult, and almost all in relation to his working life, so I'm not sure how the entire timeline works out. I'll have to ask more about that later.

My grandfather was born in 1930. He grew up in Rosenberg, Texas on a farm. He had several brothers and sisters (the exact number of which I don't know). Two of his older brothers served in World War II. His eldest was in the Pacific, and was an honor guard when Gen. MacArthur signed the formal surrender of Japan. Maybe he's in this photo somewhere?

Paw Paw lit up again when he told that story - "Imagine that, a country boy from Texas with a third grade education being there when they ended the war." 

His other brother, Archie, didn't see combat, but Paw Paw said that he wanted to. I wanted to ask more about this, but I got distracted.

Paw Paw himself served in the Naval Reserves. He joined in 1938 and spent four years as a supply sergeant, handing out uniforms and such. He received his honorable discharge from the Navy and set about building a life for himself.

At this point, I assume he was married to my grandmother, but I don't know. 

Originally he was working at a service station (apparently not for the gas company, I'm not sure), but his mother didn't like him doing that, so she had Archie, who was already a gas man, get him a job in Houston.

Somehow, Uncle Sam came calling again. Through some snafu with the paperwork, Paw Paw ended up finding himself conscripted into the Army and living on a base in California.

I find the fact that he seemingly didn't do much to contest this pretty hilarious and indicative of my family's general attitude toward life and authority figures. I'd say my own predisposition to deferring to my elders pales in comparison to potentially serving in Korea rather than risk rocking the boat.

Luckily for him, the base he was at had been recently reactivated after a long dormancy and was thus infested with mold and rot. Paw Paw suffered from asthma and the nasty blankets rendered him unable to breathe. (Despite him washing it, he informed me.)

He ended up in the medical ward and the chief officer on the base happened to be a physician. He was making rounds with the sick soldiers and asked my grandfather what his situation was. Paw Paw explained what was going on, at some point articulating that he already had his discharge, which he fished out of his pack and showed the officer.

The morning after he finished recuperating, the officer fetched him from his bunk and told him that he was having a meeting with some sort of review board. At the meeting, the officer told them Paw Paw's story and asked why a man who had already served four years was coughing and sputtering up California when he had a wife at home in Texas. The other officers saw the validity of this question and he was sent home that day. It happened to be the 89th day of his service. GI benefits kick in after 90 days. 

Back in Houston, he rejoined the gas company and began building a life part two. He started digging ditches and eventually moved up to a more general service technician position, working on pipelines and meters and what-not, before moving on to a fabrication shop. 

I can't remember the exact timeline, but at some point he started going in on weekends on his own time to observe and learn more about some process that the company was doing, and when his supervisor found out, he just moved him to that team. From there, he held a series of jobs within the company, most of the seemingly awful. 

Near as I can tell, Paw Paw figured out which job was the least coveted and set out to do it. He was in charge of telling people that their gas was being shut off, he was on a team that swapped out meters (boring and tedious), and, eventually, his superiors realized that he had a knack for dealing with unpleasant situations, so they sent him out to shape up service centers that were having trouble with the unions. 

From there, he became a kind of roving clean-up man - turning underperforming service centers into performing ones. I asked him how he did this, whether he was imposing or conciliatory. He told me that all he did was sit down with whoever he identified as troublemakers and told them to shape up. This seemingly did the trick for all but one recalcitrant rogue, but he was undone by smoking a marijuana cigarette in his company vehicle. 

He worked his way up in the company, eventually becoming a district manager. The company sent him to training at Texas A&I at once point and it was an experience that seemed to profoundly affect him. He was so grateful for the instruction that he had Granny help him draft a letter of thanks.

At this point, the conversation took a short digression into how much Granny had helped him over the years. He smiled radiantly at her as she sat rocking and occasionally chiming in.

I was charmed by the old worldliness of this story. His simple expression of gratitude enacted with the helping hand of his wife. It was a move entirely devoid of cynicism in a way that I think is almost impossible these days. 

At some point, my aunts and father were born. He bought several houses, but he seemed to have a shaky hold on the real estate game. Each time he told me about a new house, it sounded great, but then they'd get robbed or something and they'd feel compelled to move to a different neighborhood. 

It was around this part in the story that I glanced at the clock and realized how late it was. Paw Paw was still going strong, but Granny had nodded off a little in her chair.  

He moved on to telling me a little about his home life, about how he coached my dad in little league, and how he thought he was really special pitcher.

When he brought up my dad, I did something that I'd never really done before, which was study his face. There's a penciled portrait of my Paw Paw that hangs in their living room. It was a retirement gift and it shows him sitting at his desk in his office, holding a pencil and smiling a big, broad smile. It's my go-to mental image of Paw Paw. 

If I had to pick one word to describe my grandfather physically, it would probably be broad. He has big ears and his smile stretches the corners of his face. 

In my mind, he's always been a physical presence, not fat, but substantive. This may be vestigial memory from a time when I was tiny and therefore every adult human had some heft, but the truth remains, when I conjure up an image of my grandfather, there's a physicality to it that is almost outside the realm of normal people. 

However, sitting in that chair, listening to him talk about my dad, I started to search for the resemblance, and I saw it. Their noses are nearly identical and he has the deep-set eyes that all three of us share. It was one of those unusual moments where you realize that you've always viewed someone a certain way and then find yourself seeing them differently. 

This visual observation coupled with the story he was telling fundamentally altered the way that I viewed him. He ceased existing in my mental category of "grandfather" (which is mythic and unassailable and also profoundly unknowable [essentially by design]) and started to take on a life of his own, as a fully realized person with emotions beyond delight at seeing me and frustration with Gary Kubiak. 

So he went on telling this story, about how he thought my dad had the potential to be a great pitcher and it's at this point that I interjected, and told a story that I had only recently learned from my dad about how high school baseball affected him, about how he didn't get along with his coach and about how it made him get up in his head and play poorly.

As I was telling that story, I experienced this cathartic state that I can't fully articulate. I almost stepped outside of myself and glimpsed, however briefly, how the stories of my grandfather and my father led to my story and reflected my story in an almost recursive pattern. I felt how deeply Paw Paw believed that my dad had a special talent, which informed further how I felt about my dad telling me his story about how he felt playing baseball, which in turn added all of these new layers to my own experience playing.

I remember when my dad told me about him getting the yips in high school. I wondered why he waited until I was 23 to tell me. It made me think of one day when I was 16, driving down the loop in Lubbock in my red Galaxie 500, crying because I hated baseball and hated my coach, but more than anything, hated the thought of letting my dad down by quitting. It made me wonder how I would have approached the game differently if I'd known at 16 that I wasn't alone in having this experience. That at one point in his life, he too had been so demoralized by the situation around him that it had started to affect his play. 

Hearing Paw Paw talk shed new light on that story. It made me realize that my father, too, had a dad that he didn't want to disappoint. I wondered if Paw Paw ever told my dad that he thought he was a special player. I wondered if that was why my dad never put any pressure on me to aspire to certain levels of play - if he felt like he was doing me a service by letting me figure out what I wanted on my own.

If that sounds like a negative realization, it wasn't at all. It may have been bittersweet, but what it really was was deeply grounding. In that moment, I felt a connection with my father and grandfather that was, for lack of a better word, orienting. In understanding those two men better, I understood myself better and my love for both of them deepened. 

It made me regret not taking the time earlier to explore my family story, especially for someone like me who claims to be so invested in both story and family. 

The conversation sort of trailed off after this, and I sent Paw Paw and Granny to bed before making my way back out into the muggy Houston air. It was a city that I never really knew, having moved away when I was only three, but at that moment, reflecting on my father and grandfather and all of the Gregorys way back to when Stanislas first came over from Poland, I felt at home.