Several summers ago I was sitting on the patio, rereading Atlas Shrugged. My precocious 10 year old granddaughter, who was really into books, asked me “what are you reading grandpa?” I told her I was rereading a book that was very important to me that I had read it several times. She, of course asked why and I told her that it was more than a novel and that it was written by a woman that developed a philosophy that I believed was changing the world. She said my book looked big and old. I told her that it was over 1100 pages and the copy I was reading was given to me by some British Steel executives that I had once been assigned to guide on multiple plant visits in a technology exchange program. I told her that I knew she liked books and I hoped she would read this book when she was older. As a matter of fact, even though it was getting fragile, I hoped she would have my copy after I am gone. She looked very serious and asked “But what if I don’t want to read it?” I laughed and said that by asking that very question, I knew that when she was old enough to understand it, that she would want to and that it would become an important book to her also.
Last summer this granddaughter, now 14 was visiting and as usual she wanted to take me to Barnes and Noble for obvious reasons. For her birthday I give her a year subscription to Kindle Unlimited because she goes through an average of three books per week but hard cover books are what she loves because she can hold them and look at them after she reads them. While going through the shelves at B&N she points to a AS paperback and says I think I am ready to read that but I might have too much weight in my bag to fly home if you bought it for me now so you could give it to me for Christmas if you want to. Naturally, this was under the tree.
I knew that she was very busy because her family just moved to Florida last year and to get into the same type of academic program she was in when they lived in Virginia was her top priority. She panicked when she found that the qualification tests for the Florida kids assumed that they had taken pre-calculus in the second semester of the 8th grade and in VA they weren’t scheduled for it until the first semester of the 9th grade. Her solution was to buy the book and teach it to herself in just a few weeks. She scored very well on the tests and is enrolled in a Cambridge program for the gifted and talented. She has mentioned that she is having a hard time reading the things she wants to because of the massive work she has to do for her classes and she was putting in some extra because she only had an A in one class and she needed to pull her grade up to A+ like all her others.
So, I am sitting at my desk the other day and the phone rings. When I answer it is my granddaughter. She says “Grandpa, explain something to me. What does the “Anti dog eat dog act mean? And since Jim says it is good for the railroads, why doesn’t Dagney like it?”
I know this is a personal story, some of which I have previously mentioned. It is bragging on my granddaughter. It is a little thing that gave me pleasure but I think it is worth sharing because it is Ayn Rand’s 112th birthday, Atlas Shrugged was first published 60 years ago and a little girl is sitting by the pool in Florida pondering the meaning of her message.