Information

by Brendyn Schneider

When I was very young, maybe five or six years old, I had this little red plastic walkie-talkie. The word, “INFORMATION” was written across the front. Lightning bolts struck either end of the word.

One afternoon, I stopped my big wheels (complete with skid-out! brake) and took a real good look at the walkie-talkie. What was this word? Why lightning bolts? Was “INFORMATION” electricity? Was it something I could send to “the guys on CHiPs”? We radioed back and forth a lot, after all.

Mom was in the house, making dinner. The chances of an in-depth Q&A session about this new word were real slim. As all kids know, the hour or so before dinner is a treacherous slice of time. The table has to be set, the dishwasher always has to be emptied. If I went in there now, the side of the house might have to be painted. The word wasn’t that important.

Dad wasn’t home from work yet. My brother Ed was up the tree, across the street with our neighbor Vinny. They couldn’t hear my questions about the world earlier on. No reason to believe this would be any different. Who else? Aunt Renee was still at work too. Wait! Of course! Uncle Bob.

My aunt and uncle lived on the ground floor of our house. It was great for visits but their proximity was especially favorable since they had Cinemax and Showtime. We only had HBO upstairs. This was the 80s. Cable was king.

Uncle Bob didn’t have a job like the other grownups. He was a carpenter, which had some strange rules attached to it. There was lots of wood – large, flat, thick, small, thin, long, sanded, carved and usually marked up with a lot of heavy pencil. I couldn’t add in any of my drawings though. Most of the time, he advised that I stay away from “the merchandise” altogether.

There were the green bottles too. H-e-i-n-e-k-e-n was written across the label. They smelled like his breath. I couldn’t touch them either.

The cool thing about carpentry was the schedule. It wasn’t 9-5. Sometimes he went to a place called “the shop” but he was home a lot so we could shine flashlights into space, fly kites, and of course, answer questions.

I found him in his kitchen, sprinkling flakes into his fish tank.

“Hey, Uncle Bob. What’s ‘information’?”

He put the fish food down and I handed him the walkie-talkie. Now, he didn’t handle it the same way other adults would. He turned it over with careful hands, gingerly catering to my belief that this little plastic box was no toy. This was a long-range transmitter/receiver, the same kind of hi-tech device used by “the guys on CHiPs.”

“Sure enough,” he said. “‘Information’ is something communicated from one person to another.”

I remember looking at him, wrinkling my face.

“Okay,” he searched the ceiling for the right words. “You just came in here and asked me what something meant, right?”

I nodded.

“And I told you the meaning of the word. Both your question and my answer – that’s ‘information.’”

“So, it’s like, talking?”

“Yeah, it could be. But it’s an idea, Bren, an exchange. If I put food in the fish tank, the fish know I’m feeding them. What’s telling them to swim to the surface is the information of the flakes on the water.”

I remember the feeling of my brain opening up. Understanding shined on my face.

“You catch on?” he smiled, handing back the walkie-talkie.

I nodded and walked back outside, looking at the toy with new eyes.

Not long after that, I realized that the walkie-talkie was not transmitting my “INFORMATION” back to “the guys on CHiPs” but the conversation with my uncle stuck with me. For a long time, I didn’t know why.

Just after he died, the lesson’s underlying message finally dawned on me. There’s the stuff about communication – its design, its function. But when “INFORMATION” is peppered with respect, patience, and a keen sense of timing, it becomes something far greater.

So Uncle Bob, out there in the Great Beyond, thanks for introducing me to wisdom.

***
More stories by Brendyn Schneider can be found at www.brendynschneider.com

© 2010-2012, Brendyn Schneider, reprinted by Dadity.com with permission. Use or reprint not authorized without permission of the author.

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