A Lesson from Myrtle

It takes a special person to teach a five year old the concept of time on earth and our place in it. But that was exactly what my grandmother did one day in late June.

“Okay, Kurt,” Granny said from the other side of her cramped apartment at Fairview Manor. “Just tape the end of the paper to the back door.”

I pressed my thumb to the green door. The slice of Scotch tape held firm - two feet below the peep and just a little to the left of the imposing deadbolt lock.

“Now come to the front door,” Granny said.

I followed the roll of old white calculator tape as it snaked its way out of the kitchen, over the dining room table, nearly snagging in the fake bowl of plastic fruit in the middle, around the green leather recliner and finally past the TV.

Granny stood at the front door. She held the dwindling roll of paper in one hand and a single piece of tape in the other. Then - wincing just a bit from her arthritis - she gripped the paper with her swollen hands and with a a sharp yank from her bulging knuckle, she tore the paper free from the roll, which she tucked into her front pocket. Then she applied the Scotch tape and adhered the other end of the tape to the front door.

“This is the end of the tape. The end you stuck to the back door is the beginning. Now try to look all the way back to the beginning of the tape,” she instructed.

I retraced the tape back over the TV, by the recliner, past the bowl of fruit on the dining table, and around the corner into the kitchen where it disappeared.

“Now let’s walk back and check the marks,” she said.

I found myself looking closer at the tape. Sure enough there were pencil marks several feet apart on the paper.

“These, my dear,” Granny said in the tone that meant she was teaching me something important, “are the periods in earth’s history. Then she topped right before the kitchen. Now look at the beginning of the tape.

I did.

“That is the creation of earth. And as you can see the longest section lasts all the way from the back door to the dining table. That was the period the earth was cooling and preparing for life. But look how long it lasted. Imagine each each foot is - oh - a hundred million years.”

I began to feel my mind swim.

“Now come here with me,” she said and we walked past several other lines. Then I began to note things drawn on the tape in additon to words. “Here is your favorite period, The Jurassic Period.”

From all the hours Granny spent reading me articles from the National Geographics she ordered and buying me a small horde of plastic dinosaurs, I knew she was right. Sure enough. I looked on top of the TV and saw that she had placed my favorites - T-Rex and Steggosaurus on top next to the Jurrasic period.

“Yet, if you look at the front door, which is where we are now in earth’s history, you can see just how long ago it was.” It was true. I stared at the distance between the TV and thr door.

“So where are we?” I asked.

Granny took me by the hand, walked me over right up to the door. Then she took a pencil out from her back pocket.

“We my dear,” she said with the pencil poised,”are right here” and she snapped a quick thing line across the very edge of the tape. It was so slight that I had to look close to see it.

“So sometimes when we like to thing were so high and mighty,” she said grinning, “thing of this little experiment,” she said and turned me around so I could see the enormity of earth’s entire history winding across her apartment.