My Silent Grandpa
...ht they really just wanted to make my grandpa happy by letting him see his home again. The whole plane ride I was seated next to my grandpa, and the whole plane ride I tried to communicate with him. I truly believed he hated my family and me, because he didn’t say a word to any of us for the whole 15 hours we were on the plane. He just sat there, sleeping with his eyes closed, yet I really don’t even know if he was actually sleeping, or just acting like he was sleeping so he wouldn’t have to talk to the rest of us. After a while I gave up and decided that talking to him was like talking to a wall. After several days of touring Vietnam and sitting besides my grandpa on mute, I finally got to see the true side of this man. My dad rented a van and my grandpa, mom, sister and I hopped in to tour the streets. We soon got lost and had no idea where we were heading. Some how we ended up driving under the pouring rain through mud in a street narrow enough only for one car to pass. My parents seemed to worry as they frantically looked front to back, side to side, looking for a familiar sign of some sort that would help them remember where we were. My sister and I sat there not knowing what to think, and my grandpa, still, sat there, with a stoic look on his face, not caring about anything else going on in the real world. Two motorcycles quickly sped up in front of our van and stopped my dad from going any further. My dad rolled down the window and asked in Vietnamese, “Is there a problem?” The man abruptly shoved a baton of some sort in my dad’s face and said, “We can not let you go any further, you are on private territory and you belong to us now.” “Can we just turn around then? We didn’t mean any harm.” My dad quickly said with a frightened look on his face. The man on the other motorcycle circles around the van and sits on his bike behind the van and the first man looks at my dad and says, “No!” He sees the video camera in my mom’s lap and his eyes seem to light up with green dollar signs. “We want the video camera and anything else you have in the van that is worth money before we let you go.” The door next to my grandpa suddenly swings open and my grandpa hops out. He walks up to the first man, with his eyes wide open filled with anger, and for some reason, without his limp. He grabs the baton from the man and points it back at him. For the first time, I hear full phrases fly out of my grandpa’s mouth. “What do you think you are doing? This is my family you’re trying to stop!” The man quickly answers back trying not to look scared, “You are on our property, and that means you are under our con...