Entry tags:
Trying to figure out the space-time continuum here
(points at icon)
Animorphs 31 (the Grandpa G book):
"I remember when he came home from the war," my grandfather mused. "He was a different man. He said he wanted nothing but peace after seeing so much."
--
"The other old soldiers took the folded American flag off the casket and gave it to my grandmother, Grandpa G's daughter."
The first line doesn't necessarily contradict the second--if Jake's grandmother is Grandpa G's daughter, then Jake's grandfather was the boyfriend who knew his girlfriend's dad before he went off to war and contrasts that with the personality change afterwards.
But:
Animorphs is set around 1998-2001ish, and Jake is age 13-16 during that time, Tom is a couple years older. This means Tom was probably born around 1982. We don't know how old Jean was then, but the median age for first-time mothers in the US then was approximately 23 (and on an increasing trend). So let's say Jean was born around 1959, with some wide error bars. Her parents were probably born in the late 30s, and Grandpa G maybe in the late 1910s?
If the quotes are KASUs, then I can imagine a perceptive kid who was still fairly young when Grandpa G went off to fight recognize a personality change upon the return. (US soldiers in WWII skewed towards their early 20s, but by 1944 there were many more 30-somethings with children, which fits with Grandpa G being at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.)
If the implication is that Grandma was old enough for Grandpa to be in the picture when Grandpa G left for the war...how old are any of these people??
Part of my pointless curiosity is me trying to compare this into my family's terms. My parents are both younger siblings of large families, and they were older-than-average when my siblings and I were born, in part because they were more-educated than average and spent a while in school before getting married. I don't think I was alive at the same time as any of my great-grandparents, much less a teenager. But my grandfather, who was in WWII, has a great-grandchild (my cousin once removed) who just reached teenagerhood...earlier this month, not in 1998.
I need a tag for "pointless chronology stuff" because it's spreading beyond the Chess fandom, I guess!
Animorphs 31 (the Grandpa G book):
"I remember when he came home from the war," my grandfather mused. "He was a different man. He said he wanted nothing but peace after seeing so much."
--
"The other old soldiers took the folded American flag off the casket and gave it to my grandmother, Grandpa G's daughter."
The first line doesn't necessarily contradict the second--if Jake's grandmother is Grandpa G's daughter, then Jake's grandfather was the boyfriend who knew his girlfriend's dad before he went off to war and contrasts that with the personality change afterwards.
But:
Animorphs is set around 1998-2001ish, and Jake is age 13-16 during that time, Tom is a couple years older. This means Tom was probably born around 1982. We don't know how old Jean was then, but the median age for first-time mothers in the US then was approximately 23 (and on an increasing trend). So let's say Jean was born around 1959, with some wide error bars. Her parents were probably born in the late 30s, and Grandpa G maybe in the late 1910s?
If the quotes are KASUs, then I can imagine a perceptive kid who was still fairly young when Grandpa G went off to fight recognize a personality change upon the return. (US soldiers in WWII skewed towards their early 20s, but by 1944 there were many more 30-somethings with children, which fits with Grandpa G being at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.)
If the implication is that Grandma was old enough for Grandpa to be in the picture when Grandpa G left for the war...how old are any of these people??
Part of my pointless curiosity is me trying to compare this into my family's terms. My parents are both younger siblings of large families, and they were older-than-average when my siblings and I were born, in part because they were more-educated than average and spent a while in school before getting married. I don't think I was alive at the same time as any of my great-grandparents, much less a teenager. But my grandfather, who was in WWII, has a great-grandchild (my cousin once removed) who just reached teenagerhood...earlier this month, not in 1998.
I need a tag for "pointless chronology stuff" because it's spreading beyond the Chess fandom, I guess!