“OK, so, Grandma, what's the point?”
This was eight-year-old Gracie Trent, looking at the cover of the book her grandmother, Mrs. Velma Stepforth, was reading: Award for the Lost, by C.L. Solton.
Mrs. Stepforth looked around the book at Gracie with a smile.
“What do you think the problem is?” she said.
“First you gotta find them,” Gracie said, “and then give them the award. They're lost. You can't even pin the ribbon on their chest yet, or give them the money, and they really need to come home and probably want that more!”
For her age – really for any age – Gracie was an advanced systems thinker. Mrs. Stepforth marveled at it both for what it was, and also how it reflected the advanced systems thinking of her husband, Mr. Thomas Stepforth Sr. He had used his to become a billionaire, and from all accounts, it had started just that early.
But Gracie was definitely a life-focused systems thinker – money meant little to her, because her big, loving personality just moved things around her such that she could never lack for resources, and she already knew where to find more.
“You gotta take the award money and get a good search-and-rescue team together,” she said.
“Kind of like the cart before the horse, huh?” Mrs. Stepforth said.
“Yeah, because you can push a cart from the back, but the horse doesn't like it, and if you use a car instead, you're probably going to mess up both of them, Grandma.”
“Come on up on this side, Gracie, and I'll tell you what the book is about. You're not wrong, actually.”
Gracie plopped down by her grandmother, and grinned and then snuggled in as her grandmother put her arm around her.
“It's big vocabulary and history for grown-ups,” Mrs. Stepforth said, “but it is basically about clapping up people for doing evil, for covering for evil, or instead of getting them the help they really need.”
“Like I said, we gotta find the people first, and then start singing 'Amazing Grace' so they know what we are trying to do.”
“But sometimes, Gracie, people don't want it yet. That last group does, but the other two? No.”
“Oh, well, they just gotta stay out there until they get tired,” Gracie said. “Ain't nobody got time for that when there are people who want to come home.”
For an eight-year-old, that was stunning perspective … but Gracie was Mrs. Stepforth's grandchild too, and that was Big Mama Velma to a T. She had left her billionaire husband in the cold for ten years until he realized some things money can't buy or fix. He had stayed out there, a chaste divorcee, until he had gotten tired … and then come home to his whole family.
“You're not wrong, Gracie. It's just understanding who will come, and who won't, why, and how not to waste the effort. That's what the book is really about.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Gracie said. “It's like trying to help Edwina get it together – she really does want to be a sweet little girl, and she is when she's calm. We can help her because that's what she really does want. But then we've got criminals in the family, and I'm eight, and they've been dumb just that long. Dad says they gotta go to jail for about twenty more years to get it, so he made sure Cousin Darnell got set up to figure it out, because he can't be over here and isn't even smart enough to know better. How are you going to try to boss up on somebody who can shoot out all four tires on your car at the same time, and all you are wearing to run in is some old church shoes?”
“Old Stacey Adams, huh?” Mrs. Stepforth said.
“And you're at the Veteran's Lodge, where if a sergeant can't have you made into swiss cheese in a minute, Uncle Captain next door can order everybody around but a major, a colonel, or a general – and then Capt. Ludlow has that voice, so even some of them might not figure out fast enough that he's not really a general.”
Mrs. Stepforth just ran through all this in her mind … the systems that Gracie managed in her head, to understand ranking in actual ability to do violence and survive it, and the ranking system of the military, and real power, both ways.
And then …
“Wait a minute, Gracie. How did your father get all four tires?”
“I don't know because I don't know what they teach in the military, but I know that messing with Sgt. Vincent Trent, my dad, at his house, ain't what you want.”
“Folks out here setting themselves for an award for the lost, huh?”
“Look, Grandma. Dad, Col. Lee who is next door now, Capt. Ludlow who will be back next week, and Uncle Major Tom, Vertran's dad, are all the same type of people – and Edwina is one of those type of people too, but, she can't be a general at eight years old, because you gotta work up in rank, and that's going to take until she's at least 12 if she works at it.
“Melvin is one of those type of people too sometimes – somebody tried to break in while we were still up in New York, and by the time Melvin got finished putting on every pit bull sound he has in that soundboard, I don't think that poor man has yet stopped running. That's good because you know Melvin goes to the ranges Dad goes to, and now that Dad is home they are getting their shooting practice in and Vanna is too – so especially with her, too, it's good to run, because all I'm saying is, none of those type of people care if we have to take the awards out on Memorial Day to the gravesite and put them with the flowers. With those type of people, if you mess with their people, you basically want an award for the lost, because you are about to be gone.”
“I don't even think C.L. Solton thought about that part,” Mrs. Stepforth said.
“Well, you gotta think about that stuff too if you are out here doing the work,” Gracie said, “because you don't have to find them if they just don't get lost, and if you don't want to get lost, messing with those type of people and also God ain't what you want.”
“Keeps the work down for everybody,” Mrs. Stepforth said.
“Yes, because I like the work, but, I also like time off to snuggle,” Gracie said, and smiled, and went to sleep, leaving her grandmother to reconsider her reading in a new and mind-blowing way.