Don't Let Grandpa Drive on Sunday

My son was five and not a dramatic child — he was the kind of kid who reported playground injustices with the neutrality of a referee. So when he started saying the sentence, it stood out for its blandness. No fear, no story attached. Just, at odd moments: 'Tell Grandpa the car is wrong for Sunday.'

First time, at dinner, we did the amused-parents routine. Wrong how, buddy? He shrugged: 'It's wrong underneath. The man said tell him.' Which man? Another shrug — five-year-olds dispense information on a need-to-know basis and have decided you don't need to know.

He said it Thursday. He said it Friday, stopping mid-cartoon like he'd remembered homework. Saturday morning he stood in the kitchen doorway with his shoes on the wrong feet and delivered it with mild exasperation — the tone of a child who has passed along a message twice already and cannot understand why the adults haven't handled it.

My father drives forty minutes of motorway every Sunday to the lake, where he swims year-round with other leathery old men. It's the spine of his week. And his car was, as far as anyone knew, fine.