Three and a half years ago, I finally got to be a grandmother–the greatest title I could ever have. I chose “Gamma,” as my moniker due to family sorority affiliation and had the Greek letter tattooed on my upper arm. (Weird, perhaps, but I considered it my personal rite of passage.)

Recently, my three and a half-year-old and my two-month-old grandsons came to Phoenix for nine days, and very quickly, Gamma understood why God gives children to young people instead of old people:

1. What’s up with car seats? In the olden days, there was your mother’s lap and the back seat of the family car. Seats belts were non-existent until mandated in 1968. Then came care seats for infants and children that simply wrapped around the back seat belt. But today, one needs a PHD in engineering to properly attached or detach these seats. Trust me, it took me thirty minutes to extricate the “big boy” seat from my car, and I am awaiting a smart person to come and remove the infant seat. Yes, I tried; I even read the directions and had no idea what I was doing. Damn, I even asked the carwash folk how to get it out of my back seat, and they declined.
2. What’s up with preschool report cards? My daughter was frantic when she emailed me the three-year-old’s eight-page report card today. Since I spent my 50-year professional career in education, I know a bit about report cards. However, I had never encountered such a ridiculous amount of useless information when I perused this one. First of all, it had a rating scale of 0 to 7, yet there was no key to explain the number. Benny had mostly threes and fours, even though the teacher described him as an “amazing investigator,” who “exhibits great curiosity and joy.” When I saw he earned a three in letter identification and letter sounds, I laughed. I’d just spent nine days with him, where he read books to me. Not books he’d seen or read before, but Green Eggs and Ham, Yertle the Turtle, and the human body section in 100,000 Whys for Curious Kids! Further, he knows the names of every dinosaur that walked the earth, he explained Black Holes to me and dwarf planets. To me, his math skills are unusual; he’s been able to count to a hundred since he was two and identify any random number, like 47 or 92. But I guess when parents pay a monthly fortune for preschool, the school felt obligated to issue report cards, regardless of their validity.
3. What’s up with these new rules? Benny arrived in Phoenix with an outrageous cough and a runny nose, which I attributed to preschool germ world. Unfortunately, his nose secretion went from clear, to yellow, to green. “Hey Lenz, don’t you think you should give Benny some Triaminic?” My suggestion was met with an emphatic no. Seems that’s unacceptable, as is this food, this drink, this snack, etc. Ye gods! How did my kids manage to become adults? How did I get to be a septuagenarian after drinking water from a garden hose, riding in a car without seatbelts, riding a bicycle without a helmet, and eating hot dogs?

Thankfully, though, baby Cade did very well on his first visit to Arizona. His needs were simple: a dry diaper, a bottle, and a ceiling fan that whirled round and round. However, Benny’s insatiable curiosity and overdrive energy made this Gamma very glad to be an old broad.