I showed him the crude drawing of the atom that I had sketched with pencil and paper, with its nucleus of protons and neutrons, and its whirling electrons, too tiny to see or to feel that made up all stuff, all matter, all things.
"What do you mean by 'everything is made out of atoms, ' he asked after listening respectfully to me, his eldest grandchild explain something he had just learned in science class that day, and was excited to share.
"'Moving?' What you mean moving?" He asked. "That chair you're sitting in ain't moving.'"He insisted, hurling my own words back into my face. "This pencil in my hand ain't moving. You ain't moving and I ain't either. Solid," he said, knocking on wood for emphasis.
I sensed it was time to leave that alone. So, I said nothing more.
Seems like grand-daddy's and atomic theories don't mix, I thought to myself. My crudely drawn image of the lithium atom--or was it hydrogen, back then?-- did not translate into his life. It did not "move" him, whom I loved.
So, I put away my atomic lesson with my Grand-Daddy and moved on.
