maple syrup, grandpa’s gotta go, and a one hundred dollar offer for you!

quick, take out a sheet of paper and write down the name of every person you saw on a daily basis ten years ago. the guy behind the counter at the grocery store. the cute girl in class who let you look at her answers but said no to going to the prom. the mother of the kid your kid was best friends with. the crossing guard. the members of your hockey team.

these people were really important to you but if you’re anything like me, some of the people you deal with today were with you ten years ago but some of them. . . you can’t even remember their name and wouldn’t have a clue how to locate them. except for facebook, with a little detective work.

ten years ago, my beloved f2fb #1 younger son eastman was in a movie directed by f2fb jason glaser. linda glaser (f2fb #65) welcomed over thirty film students into her home for three weeks of filming. oh, and she paid for the movie. i was eastman’s personal assistant, er, mom slash chaperone. there to make sure that nobody would share their drugs with him. i was very tight with the group. i knew everybody’s name, from the key grip to the director’s girlfriend. or at least i did at the time.

i still know the star (balbinka, a facebook friend), jason (another facebook friend), steve ware (ditto), and grzegorz who would never open a facebook account even if you promised he would win mafia wars.

i hadn’t seen linda glaser in years even though we had shared a very intense experience in the making of her son’s film. but i drove into ada, michigan which is suburb of cascade, michigan which is, in turn, a suburb of grand rapids, michigan and returned to the place where eastman and jason filmed “grandpa’s gotta go”. a heart warming movie about grandparents and their grandchildren, who ask veternarians to put them to sleep.

in any event, it was as if i had never left. we talked way into the night, two new friends arrived and suddenly it was a party. the glaser family is like that, always inviting people into their lives.

the next morning, linda made french toast.

and the syrup was smoky and warm and i said, “hey, is this aunt jemima syrup?” and she said no, it’s the last of the syrup we made last spring. that’s when i figured out that the glasers could, if necessary, survive in the event of a nuclear holocaust. after all, they have a stocked wine cellar, a lot of cocktail napkins, and a bit of the farmer’s instinct in them.

now, the hundred dollars. one copy of the movie “grandpa’s gotta go”. no questions asked. we both looked for it last night. linda doesn’t have a copy. i don’t have a copy. somebody’s gotta have a copy.

later today, i get my portrait made in zanzibar!