Evening Phone Calls of the Past

"Jon!" my mom yelled from the kitchen. "Telephone."

I came down the hall.

"It's Pop Pop," she whispered handing me the phone.

"Jonny," he said eagerly. I could tell he was excited about something--as excited as an eighty-two year old man can sound.

"There's a show on Discovery," he'd start. "There going over how the continents were formed, looking into the tectonic plates. Channel twenty-six."

Pop Pop often did this, every time he came across an interesting show on evolution, dinosaurs, space, or how the earth and solar system formed. His first reaction, it seemed, was to call me. Most of the time when he called, I went right to the channel and was soon glued to the TV.

When I was over their house, the only shows Pop Pop and I would watch would be science documentaries or the Yankees game.