Heaven, What I Plan to Do There, and EBay

[copied from dland]

Have you ever watched Inside the Actor's Studio, and at the end, James Lipton asks those questions invented by someone or other in France? Here are the questions:

1. What is your favorite word or sound?

2. What sound or noise do you hate?

3. What is your favorite curse word?

4. What profession other than your own would like to have attempted?

5. What profession other than your own would you never like to have attempted?

6. When you die and go to the pearly gates (that's what Lipton says), what would you like to hear St. Peter (the gatekeeper) say to you when you arrive?

So the first three questions -- maybe the first four -- no big deal. Number 5 is easy: soldier. I would never want to be a soldier.

Number 6 is the good one. Here is what I'd like to hear someone say to me when I arrive at the gates of heaven:

"Come right on in; Grandpa's waiting for you."

What I expect to do in heaven is that I expect to be between 6 and maybe 11 years old -- it could change from moment to moment -- and I expect to be with Grandpa pretty much all the time. The best would be that I'm sitting in the den at the house on 33rd Street, the knotty-pine semi-basement room in the split-level house. I'm sitting on the old gold-colored vinyl couch that was so uncomfortable, like every other couch or chair in the house, but it looked right for the room. I'm setting up the game board for "Meet the Presidents", getting ready all the little silver coins, one for each president, and the big dial that you spin to get your presidential trivia question. I've got it all ready. I'm just waiting for Grandpa to come downstairs and play. He's coming, but first he has to use the bathroom.

And then he's there, coming down the steps. He's never changed, not at all, not since I was born. He's always the same. He wears gray trousers about two sizes too big for him, and a button-up shirt, probably plaid, buttoned all the way up to his neck. Unless it's really hot outside, the shirt has long sleeves. He wears glasses -- I never saw him in wire-rims, only plastic frames -- and he comes downstairs with a light step. He's about 70 now, and probably tops the scales at about 125 pounds. He has a round nose and a deep tan, unless it's December and he hasn't been to Florida yet, in which case he only has a light tan. A swarthy kind of guy.

He sits down and we play. There are four levels of difficulty in the questions; I always answer the easiest level and he takes the hardest, or second-hardest. He never went to school after he learned to speak English, but he loves American history, and especially he loves anything about the presidents. This is our game.

I would make him play for hours. Sometimes he could convince me that he had to stop for a minute or two to go to the bathroom, but usually I would take a lot of convincing. I was the baby grandchild, and I was indulged, at least by him. He would do anything I wanted him to do. I would have done anything to play games with him forever.

The heavenly scene shifts, and now it's Passover, and nobody in the house cares or gives a damn about tradition or religion except Grandpa. What we all love about Passover is watching him do the whole shtick, the whole seder routine. He says the prayers, sings the songs, eats the matzo, while we all eat dinner, watch him, and occasionally murmur "homain" when he gives us the high-sign. If this is an especially good seder, Grandpa will have too much wine and then will giggle all through the songs he sings afterwards. One year he giggled so much that he couldn't stop, and laughed for hours, even after the dishes were all done and we sat around the living room, watching him laugh and being delighted throughout.

James Lipton does not ask other questions, such as what quirks do you have? Not enough time for that one. One of my quirks is that I have begun using eBay to recapture my childhood. I started by looking for and buying some of the books I remember reading. More on that another time, perhaps. Now I'm looking for "Meet the Presidents", in good condition.


ENTRY #6