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I was delighted to be a guest on the Retirement Wisdom Podcast, hosted by Joe Casey, who had me on to talk about the blog and my upcoming Good Grandpa…
I was delighted to be a guest on the Retirement Wisdom Podcast, hosted by Joe Casey, who had me on to talk about the blog and my upcoming Good Grandpa book. Joe asked great questions. Here’s a link to the show. If you’re retired, or thinking about it, you may want to check out Joe’s consulting practice. He works with people to help design their retirement thoughtfully so they can get the most out of it. I’m not yet close to retirement, but when I am I know I’ll be talking with Joe again.
When my wife, Nancy, was due to give birth to our daughter, Abigail, we’d packed our bags for the hospital and were ready to go when the contractions started. I…
When my wife, Nancy, was due to give birth to our daughter, Abigail, we’d packed our bags for the hospital and were ready to go when the contractions started. I remember that feeling, the quickening of my heart, the excitement of heading into the experience as if it were a class four white water rapid, thinking I was ready but fearing I might not be – who could ever know?
This time, it was a call from Abigail that told me she was going into labor.
I’d just had a relaxing glass of Scotch and was watching TV. When I picked up the phone I expected a casual check-in call, but it was a different story. Abigail and her husband, Ryan, were at the hospital already. Contractions were steady. And because the baby was breach, there would be a C-section. In two hours. The rush of emotion and excitement all came back to me as if it were Abigail being born and not my grandson. I told Abigail I’d be driving down as soon as possible.
Nancy, at this time, was on a business trip, and I knew she’d be in a bit of a panic. I didn’t want her to feel badly for not being there, and was resolved to keep my calm and reassure her as well as my daughter that things were under control. Nothing, of course, is ever “under control.” When birth is involved, I knew from experience it was a joyous cavalcade of bodily fluids and wailing baby cries and slimy poop and the uncertainty of wondering if there would be the right number of fingers and toes, and the billion other concerns that overwhelm even the best prepared mom, dad, or grandparent. You take a deep breath, keep moving, and hope to God things will work out.
I slept fitfully between texts from Ryan and Nancy. At 2:30 am I received the text I had been hoping and praying for: Mother and baby are happy and healthy. His name was Henry. I sat on the edge of my bed and wept. Thank you, God, I said. Thank you.
I hit the road at 3:30am for New York City, guzzling hot coffee in the darkness and light rain on the Mass Pike, and arrived at New York Presbyterian hospital on the upper East Side around 8:00. Abigail’s hospital room was quiet when I entered, save for the tiny murmuring of a baby, my grandson. The floor to ceiling hospital curtain surrounding Abigail’s bed felt to me like the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, pulled back to reveal the old man feverishly tugging at levers, only now it was Abigail in the bed holding Henry, smiling up at me, Ryan grinning in a fatherly way beside them, and I was the old man.
Meeting your own child for the first time is amazing. Meeting your grandchild is similarly exhilarating, magical and joyous. And yet there’s something more to it, another layer.
The hard work of raising Abigail right, nurturing and loving her, making sure she grew up in a nice town with great schools. Sending her to the college of her choice (George Washington, not coincidentally in the same city where Ryan – her high school sweetheart – was attending Georgetown). Celebrating her wedding on a beautiful old farm in Vermont with friends and family there to support her. All of these things formed a kind of foundation for her life that she could then build upon. And even though I could not see all these things at that moment when I held Henry for the first time, I was aware of them and felt the love and effort of all that parenting as if it had been somehow condensed in time, right at the moment I saw this wonderful and handsome baby, Henry, my grandson.
Me with my first grandchild, Henry, hours after he was born.
I held him in the crook of my arm and made no effort to stop the tears from streaming down my face. I whispered to him as much as to myself, “Hi Henry.” He was so light and small. Deeply asleep. Content.
After I’d visited them for a while, I went back to Abigail’s apartment on West 74th street and slept for a few hours. When I called Abigail to say I was heading back to the hospital, she asked me to bring the diaper bag, and the Boppy — a large horseshoe shaped pillow women use when breastfeeding. Trekking across Central Park with a diaper bag and a Boppy is a singular experience that’s hard for me to describe. Part of me felt like I was a new dad, like this was just—quite literally—another walk in the park for me. I saw young parents with kids in strollers along the meandering verdant walkways, and they’d cast knowing glances at me with my Boppy as if it was a totem of my fatherhood.
I considered blurting out to strangers, “I’m not actually a new dad! The Boppy is for my grandson!” But I didn’t. I reveled in the illusion instead.
When I arrived at the hospital room with the Boppy, Ryan and Abigail giggled at the sight of six foot six tall me holding it, with its multicolored illustrations of giraffes and elephants. Ryan looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Boppy. Maybe you’re Boppy.”
For months all my friends had asked me what I wanted my grandfather name to be. Grandpa? Pops? Gramps? I said I wasn’t sure, and didn’t know if it was actually up to me. When Ryan suggested that perhaps I was Boppy, it struck me that Henry and I had both been newly named at the same time. Both born into new lives, Henry launched into childhood, me ascending to newly minted grandfatherhood. I felt that my whole life was ahead of me.
That was ten years ago. What’s become clearer with each passing year is that my whole life was actually ahead of me—not an entirely new life of course—but a very different one, so different that I am not the same guy I was before.
In that long ago life when I was a parent, small things could make me angry, my emotional trigger ready to fire at dumb things like bad drivers. Having time to hold a baby grandchild in the quiet of the night and hear nothing but the sound of our breathing put the petty annoyances of life in perspective. Reading my grandchildren the same books we used to read our children, like Goodnight Moon and The Cat in the Hat, felt like rediscovering magic. I could use the word “joy” without irony. The often angry world still exists but somehow I’m floating above it. I’ve been admitted to the best club in the world, one so exclusive no amount of money can buy it. As you’ll see if you read my book (coming out in 2025 from Regalo Press), I’ve interviewed rich and famous grandpas, but most are regular Joes like me, and we are all on the same level playing field.
As Henry grew he was joined by a brother, then two cousins, both girls, and my name in time changed from Bobby to Grandpa Ted.
They could call me anything and I’d be happy with it, because this is the new Ted, not the old Ted, which is ironic given that I’m getting older. I’m not alone in this sentiment. Many grandfathers become deeply changed for the better, as if we’ve emerged from a chrysalis to become something freer, lighter, happier. We are the ones who walk across Central Park with a smile on our faces, carrying within us a newly found contentment. We’re the retired four-star generals sitting on the floor with their granddaughters playing with Barbies. We’re putting on our reading glasses to help find the missing LEGO piece, and while we may have grey hair (or, in my case, no hair) we are boys again.
It’s a new experience, yet it’s not all new. There are still diapers. But we all have our roles to play in this new landscape. When I’m with one of our grandbabies and a particularly pungent aroma fills the room, I’ve been known to say to my son or daughter, while making my exit, “I think someone needs changing.”
Author’s note: If you’re a grandpa, you are more than welcome to post a comment here to share your experience of the day your first grandchild was born. How did your life change?
In the early hours of May 1, 2023, a single engine Cessna 206 crashed like a meteor into a remote jungle of the Columbian Amazon. On board was…
In the early hours of May 1, 2023, a single engine Cessna 206 crashed like a meteor into a remote jungle of the Columbian Amazon.
The plane carrying the family crashed in a part of the Amazon that had never been explored.
On board was a mother and her four children, aged 13, nine, four and one; the pilot and one other adult died instantly, the mother likely lived just long enough to warn her kids to get out. The children crawled through the wreckage into a part of the Amazon that had not yet been explored, a place so wild it could have been a different planet. They were in “a very dark, very dense jungle,” explained indigenous expert Alex Rufino, “where the largest trees in the region are.” News reports of the crash described the area as .”(1) This description dramatically understates the extent of the danger these children faced, alone.
Take the snakes, for example. The amazon is home to the Anaconda, a behemoth that can weigh up to 500 pounds and grow to 29 feet long. It wraps around its prey then swallows it whole. Then there’s the Bushmaster snake, which is only about 12 feet long but is incredibly poisonous and capable of multi-bite strikes, followed by the Amazonian Palm Viper, the Fer-De-Lance, and last but not least the South American Rattlesnake.
If by chance the children were not poisoned by snakes, they’d have to contend with the Black Caiman alligator, one of the largest predators in the Amazon basin. It can grow to be over 16 feet long.
The kids could also come into contact with a Poison Dart Frog, which has a skin so toxic that merely touching it can cause paralysis and death.
More unpleasantries awaited if the children went into a body of water, which in the Amazon can be inhabited by sharp-toothed Piranhas, and Electric Eels—a fish that can send out a 600-volt shock powerful enough to incapacitate an adult. Then of course there is the Potamotrygon Stingray, the Bull Shark and the dreaded Candiru — known as the Vampire Fish due its ability to lodge in its victim’s genital track where it feeds on blood.
If the hungry children ate the fruit of the Strychonos Plant, which resembles clementines, they would ingest a juice used for making poisonous arrows.
But why worry about treacherous snakes, insects, fish and fauna when there are Jaguars nearby, a predator that can reach speeds of 50 miles per hour?
If you followed news of the crash, you may already know that 40 days later the children were found alive. There are many heroes who can take credit for their miraculous survival, but the one who caught my attention was the children’s grandmother, María Fátima Valencia, who raised them from a young age and taught them the ways of the jungle. Members of the indigenous Huitoto people, they knew to avoid the poisonous fruit of the Strychonos Plant and instead hunt for the Avichure tree—known as the milk tree—and chew its sugar-rich seeds, or the oily fruit of the Bacabapalm. They knew how to get drinking water while avoiding Piranhas. And do their best to hide from lurking Jaguars.
When military helicopter crews hunted for the children, flying low over the thick green jungle canopy, they broadcast a message recorded by María: “I’m your grandmother! I ask you a favor: You need to keep still because they are looking for you, the army!” If there was a prize for 2023’s Badass Grandma of the Year, María would have won it hands down.
Here in the United States, we don’t have an Amazon jungle, but we do have Amazon — the most efficient way to buy and receive boatloads of crap the world has ever seen.
I don’t mean to pick on the good folks at Amazon here (I’m a customer and a stockholder, and appreciate the cat litter they delivered last week, same day no less). I’m simply using Amazon to illustrate the world of modern products that pose as improvements, yet hidden within them are dangers as venomous to our grandchildren as Yellow-Bearded Vipers. When I speak to grandpas about what they fear most when they think about our grandkids’ future, the top bogy man is technology. Internet media, kids’ faces glued to screens, and the rise of artificial intelligence are the new jungle, and there is no indigenous guide to teach survival skills.
If we journey into our Amazon, here’s just a few examples of the pestiferous things families can order today.
For $264.99 we can buy a Galaxy A25 5G A Series Smart Phone with 128GM, an AMOLED Display, Advanced Triple Camera System, Expandable Storage and Stereo speakers. Forty-two percent of U.S. children have a phone like this at the age of 10. By age 14 that number jumps to over 90 percent.(2) This is not surprising given that children beg their parents for smart phones as if they were candy. The phones themselves may not be yummy, but what kids consume with them certainly is. Watching internet media releases dopamine into the brain’s pleasure centers—the same chemical released by eating delicious food or snorting cocaine.(3) And the more our grandkids eat up this media, the worse off they are. Scientists have found that there is correlation between how much time kids spend on social media and how depressed they are.(4)
In addition, there’s evidence from a UCLA study that shows that the increased use of smart phones and the resulting lesser time spent for face-to-face interaction leads to the decline in social skills among kids.(5)
If Smart Phones were alcohol or some other drug they’d be illegal for minors. Yet parents often give their kids smart phones to make them happy, or to mark a passage into adulthood like a Middle School graduation present, without fully understanding the creatures hidden inside complex circuits and Internet algorithms. Imagine a parent from the Huitoto indigenous community giving their kid a Tityus Scorpion, only worse. At least the scorpion is self-evidently dangerous so the kid wouldn’t try to play with it. But kids interact with their smart phones all the time without any hint of danger. The average teenager spends nine hours a day looking at screens.(6) Young kids have less screen time but may be at higher risk. Toddlers who spend more than two hours a day in front of screens have an increased chance of delayed speech development.(7)
Search Amazon for laptop computers and you’ll get an amazing deal on the 2024 Chromebook for students and businesses ($299 with one day Prime delivery). What parent wouldn’t want their young scholar to have the very best technology in hand when they go off to college Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way.
Just like phones, laptops and the media they serve up can be incredibly distracting.
Students type notes in lectures on their laptops or do their homework, but frequently jump away to check the latest Facebook/X/Instagram/Tik-Tok postings, which totally messes with their mental focus. Teens may claim they are good at multitasking, but scientists have demonstrated that people in general are simply not hardwired for it.(8) It takes about 20 minutes after being interrupted before mental focus is regained.(9) A study conducted at Harvard University found that just being near another student who is multitasking on a laptop during class results in poorer grades.(10)
Setting aside the hazards of media and distraction, excessive amounts of screen time is bad for eye health.
Most digital screens emit high amounts of blue light, creating what scientists refer to as the Blue Light Hazard (BLH), which can harm the retinal cells in the eye.(11) Children’s eyes are still developing, making them likely more susceptible to retinal damage from blue light. More than 65 percent of blue light is transmitted to the retinas of young children. At age 25, those numbers change to between 20 and 50 percent, depending on the specific wavelength of the light.(12) New types of non-emissive screens made with E Ink ePaper provide a much healthier screen time alternative, but few people are aware of it.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a whole different beast.
I’d read about all the buzz and decided to try it out, enlisting the help of Google’s Gemini to write a blog post about being a grandfather. Technically, Gemini is a conversational generative artificial intelligence chatbot. But Google calls it, “Your creative and helpful collaborator to supercharge your imagination, boost productivity, and bring ideas to life.” Based on what it wrote for me, I’d agree it supercharges my imagination, although not in the way Google may have intended. I was astonished that Gemini did reasonably well, instantly crafting sentences such as…
“Being a Grandfather: The Best Job in the World. Being a grandfather is one of the most rewarding experiences in life. It’s a chance to relive your own childhood through the eyes of your grandchildren, and to pass on your love, wisdom, and experience to the next generation.”
The more I read, the more it became clearer to me that Gemini’s AI algorithm was pulling ideas from my own Good Grandpa blog. All AI programs are designed to do this. What they “write” is not original per se, but rather in instant conglomeration of the most relevant stuff on the Internet. The following sentence from Gemini is basically digital plagiarism — not a word-for-word rip-off but pretty damn close:
“Being a grandfather is more than just fun. It’s also a great responsibility. You have the opportunity to make a real difference in your grandchildren’s lives. You can help them to learn and grow, and to become the best people they can be.”
In 1950, a British cybernetics pioneer named Alan Turing developed what he called The Imitation Game, known today as the Turing Test. The test was designed to determine a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, we humans. The Turing Test is more relevant today than ever as AI chatbots proliferate. How can we tell if an AI program is writing or speaking, or if it’s a real person?
For my Good Grandpa blog post, Gemini failed the Turing Test in glaring and hilarious fashion with this sentence: “If you’re thinking about becoming a grandfather, I encourage you to go for it.”
From Gemini’s perspective, we have total control over when we’re going to become grandparents, like it’s deciding if we’re going to join a gym or taking up knitting. Running with this idea, here’s an imaginary father/daughter conversation.
A phone rings. A young lady answers.
“Hi dad!”
“Hi, honey, how are you and Peter doing?”
“Good, good. Busy. How are you and mom?”
“We’re great. Planning a trip to Albuquerque in the spring.”
“Nice.”
“Oh, and one other thing. I’ve decided to become a grandfather!”
Pause. Silence.
“I see, well, that would be wonderful, someday.”
“I’m thinking now, actually.”
“But Peter and I aren’t ready to have children! We’re going to do some traveling first and…”
“Sweetie, you’ve been married for five years and it’s time to start procreating. Mom and I aren’t getting any younger.”
It’s a sure thing that AI capabilities will rapidly improve, but based on its automatic notions of total control I can only hope that future iterations will never be given access to the nuclear launch codes.
I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to my least favorite modern technology of all, now available on Amazon with free delivery right to your yard — the leaf blower (such as the Husqvarna’s 125B Gas-Powered Leaf blower for only $196.00!). If products could go to hell, there’d be a special circle in the inferno for these deeply annoying machines. Quiet fall days are a thing of the past. More often than not there are multiple leaf blowers whining incessantly like an off-key monotonous chorus of monks. Many people will say that leaf blowers are a necessary evil. But if we add up enough small but necessary evils, it amounts to an incalculable loss for our grandchildren.
Here’s my point. We grandparents grew up in an analog world and it’s up to us to let our children and grandchildren know that new technology isn’t a de facto improvement, and often it represents a giant leap backwards. A few years ago, I was touring an exhibit on industrial design at a museum in New York City when I came upon the same stereo turntable I had in college in 1978 (this was the moment I realized that I myself was an antique, but hopefully one that could still make beautiful music). Lots of people still prefer the warm sonic depth of vinyl records over the digitally cold Spotify vibe. Instagram has filters that let you make your pictures look like Polaroids from 1970. I worked for Polaroid and I can assure you that my SX-70 took way better pictures—with richer and more painterly hues—plus the picture popped out of the front of the camera so you could save it in an album or stick it on the fridge.
Most pictures taken with smart phones ultimately get lost in a digital ephemera, including those of our grandkids; shouldn’t we hold on to the pictures just as tightly as we hold them?
Today, as technology advances with growing speed, I don’t think we should fear it. To quote Frank Herbert’s classic Dune science fiction series, “Fear is the mind killer.” We simply have to get educated on technology’s hidden dangers in order to protect and nurture those we love. If we’re going to help our grandchildren become the greatest generation, we need to be the voices of experience and wisdom broadcast from the helicopter flying over our Amazon —
“We’re your grandparents! We ask you a favor: Turn off your smart phone! Close your laptop! Be social with your friends face-to-face instead of on Facebook! Stay focused on your homework so you can gain Actual Intelligence (AI) instead of the artificial kind! We love you! Now, grab a rake!”
Sources:
BBC
Forbes Health
The Guardian
Child Mind Institute
The Healthsite.com
Common Sense Media
Pediatric Academic Societies
Mayer and Moreno
Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM).
Technology and Student Distraction, Harvard University Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.
Blue Light Phototoxicity Toward Human Corneal and Conjunctival Epithelial Cells in Basil and Hyperosmolar Conditions, Marek V., et al. Free Radic. Biol. Med. 2018, 126:27-40.
Light-emitting diodes (LED) for domestic lighting: Any risks for the eye? F. Behar-Cohen, C. Martinsons, et al., Progress in Retinal and Eye Research 2011.
