A difficult homework

In one of the many Whatsapp conversations one of my granddaughters asked me to help her with a school assignment. She lives in Spain, she is twelve years old and is about to start high school. We have never met, our contact is through cell phone.

The homework had probably been sent to her by some ingenious teacher, one of those who like to rescue everyday life. The girl had to ask her grandparents, or the oldest person in the family, about aspects related to the time of her childhood.

My granddaughter also has her maternal grandfather, who is Spanish like her, but she preferred to talk to me, which was certainly a big compromise since our cultures are completely different.

She asked me to tell her about a game from my childhood. I told her that what I liked the most was to play "trompo". The word didn't mean anything to her, she had never seen a spinning top in her life. I looked up some pictures on the internet and showed her the type of spinning top we used back then.

I explained to her that during my childhood the tops were made of wood and ended in a metal tip. In the place where I lived there were some gentlemen who made them out of guava wood, a tree that has a very resistant wood.

The spinning top could be played individually and collectively. I liked to play it by myself, I could spend hours and hours watching the spinning top spin. It seemed like magic to me that I could throw it into the air with the coiled string and it would fall to the ground spinning.

The way we played it collectively was a bit violent. There were several rounds where each boy, in a group of four or five, would throw his spinning top into the center of a circle drawn on the ground.

The one who was farthest from the center had to leave his spinning top for the others to try to hit him with theirs. There were boys who had so much strength and precision that in a single throw they were able to break the spinning top on the ground.

My granddaughter listened to me and asked me questions, trying to get me to give her as many details as possible, because part of the task was that she would then have to explain to her classmates what grandpa had told her.

Then she asked me about some traditional food. That was much easier. My son, who is her father, has taken it upon himself to prepare the girls a lot of the dishes we eat in Venezuela.

I asked him if he knew "la arepa", a kind of corn cake that is filled with cheese, sausages, or various sauces. She said yes, that her father used to prepare it frequently, especially on Sunday mornings, when they were all together at home.

I told her that during my childhood they were not made as they are now. At that time the corn was cooked and then, when the kernels were soft, they were ground in a manual mill, thus obtaining the dough to make the arepas.

She found that very surprising, she told me that in her house they made them with pre-cooked corn flour that comes in a plastic package and that they buy in supermarkets. I told her that here we also now use precooked corn flour because it is much easier to use. Almost no one has to make arepas the traditional way.

Before finishing that long conversation my granddaughter told me that when she was going to make her presentation to her classmates she was going to ask her father to make some arepas to take to school. She would also have liked to show the spinning top to her classmates, but she did not know where she could find one in the place where she lived.

The truth is that I felt very good talking to my granddaughter about these things. I wish I could have thanked the Master who sent her such an ingenious task.

Thank you for your time.