Six-year-old Grayson Ludlow was not often disturbed by anything. That little boy could sit in the Lego pile and hear all kinds of drama going on in a family of 10 and mind his business.
However, confronting the kind of foolishness his great-grandfather Edwin Ludlow had put up with every day had gotten to him.
The only surviving son of Edwin, Capt. R.E. Ludlow, walked in on his grandson Grayson pulling out the blueprints of Lofton Dynast Hospital to look at them again, and then going to get five-year-old R.E. Ludlow III, also known as Lil' Robert, to come look at them.
“See, this is why we gotta be real careful with the skip a few, also known as X – how many floors do you count there, Rob?”
Lil' Robert counted.
“There's 16 floors,” he said.
“So, the 13th floor is right there, right?” Grayson said.
“Yep,” Lil' Robert said.
“Papa told me that back when Big Papa Edwin was building stuff, people lost this whole 13th floor, and it's right here. It's right here!”
Lil' Robert looked again.
“Yeah, it is – how did they do that?” Lil' Robert said.
“You can go into a bunch of buildings, and they can't count – Papa said that back then people counted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 all the time – just skipped the 13!”
Lil' Robert considered this.
“I don't want to count all that, but I'm five – I thought big people could count big numbers!” he said.
“Papa said people see what they want to see,” Grayson said.
“We need Eleanor for this,” Lil' Robert said, and went and got their big sister eleven-year-old Eleanor to come look.
“Well,” she said, “13 is considered to be an unlucky number by many, so folks who worry about luck skip it.”
“But it's still right there,” Grayson said, and put his finger on it. “Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.”
“Yes,” Eleanor said. “Adults are weird sometimes. It's like … well, y'all were reading over my shoulder about the ostrich and what happened in that situation.”
“I didn't get how they ostracize the ostrich,” Lil' Robert said. “How do you do ostra on an ostrich?”
“That's actually two words that sound alike that actually aren't related,” Eleanor said. “To ostracize means to ignore and put out of company. But you're kinda right that it didn't work, because the ostrich had already put his head in the sand and was ignoring the people ignoring him.”
“That's what I'm saying,” Lil' Robert said. “He did the ostra on them first.”
“I'm missing something,” Grayson said.
“The point is that people ignore whatever they want to,” Eleanor said, “and it tends to work until it doesn't.”
Grayson looked back at the blueprints.
“Like people missing whole floors, and then whole foundations, and then whole high schools and neighborhoods,” he said.
Eleanor reached down and embraced Grayson.
“This whole thing is really bothering you, isn't it?” she said.
“Yeah, it is,” he said. “It's like I can't grow up fast enough to fix all these messes people who don't care about how to build stuff are making.”
“Well, nobody said you had to do it, Sonny,” she said gently. “Nobody made it your job just yet. Adults have got to fix their own messes.”
“Yeah, but that doesn't always happen,” he said. “You and Rob have two parents, and I have two parents, and none of them fixed their messes.”
“But Papa and Grandma stepped up,” Eleanor said. “They are real adults, after all!”
“Well, yeah,” Grayson said. “This is true.”
“We need the real adults to get it together, and we'll just do the ostra on the rest of them,” Lil' Robert said.
Eleanor reached out her arm to embrace both her littlest brothers.
“Well, why not?” she said as they happily snuggled into her.
“Indeed, why not – let the real adults handle some things,” Capt. Ludlow said as at last he announced his presence, and embraced them all as they happily snuggled into him.