Grandparents

[Ditto.]

So- I am making the thread that CC and Northcott mentioned - your grandparents.

Were they are self serving and childlike as dm? Or is there really a generational gap that exists?


Tell us about your grandparents in their youth!

[doc]

Never knew mine, but they were hard working from what I heard from my parents, farmers and railroad

[Freedom Canadian]

My grandparents were all dead by the time I was 10. I don't remember them much.

[Pigs in Space]

Mine are all dead, over the last 6-7 years or so, except for my Maternal Grandpa, who died in '83.

Paternal Grandparents:
- Grandfather -well he emigrated to Australia from what was Yugoslavia when he was 16 where he worked in a flour mill lugging wheat bags around. He didn't really have much of a childhood, so I say NO to the question. Got my build from him. Spoke german and fought for the aussies in ww2, so he hid it - he couldn't speak much german by the time I knew him.
- Grandmother - she was a billionth generation aussie. Won a lot of tennis tournaments in her youth. She may well have been a lot more flighty, but they were poor and got married young, I don't think they had enough cash to be asses.

Maternal Grandparents:
- Grandfather - he probably gets a yes. He was a merchant marine in ww2, had shrapnel in his back from an explosion. I get the feeling he was a "girl in every port" kind of guy... there is a diary of his, that I think mum has hidden. She won't read it for some reason. Maybe she doesn't like the idea of random half-siblings. They married late, opened a store (and sold the building eventually) on a street that is now real-estate bonanza land. dissapointing they couldn't have held onto it for 40 more years.
- Grandmother - I don't really know much about her youth! I know she was... pursued by suitors, but ended up marrying a sailor with tattoos! When grandpa died in '83 she lived with us. This allowed mum to work full time, she cooked and cleaned and everything was wonderful she was a wrinkley angel. Can also trace ourselves back to British Royalty through her, btw.

Other interesting facts - both my parents are only children, I have no aunts, uncles or cousins. I do have honorary aunts.

[mollygrue]

ok-only two women in my family have died under the age of 90 in over 1000 years--so i knew mine well.

my grandma raised me.
she used to go to school, in the winter in a one horse open sleigh across the snow covered fields. it was a one room school house with an out house.
she cut her hair iin the 20s, bought a car with the egg money, and went to college. she was born before the wright brothers flew at kitty hawk
she didnt die till some years after the challenger explosion.

yes: there is a generation gap there.

[Stratego]

I never knew either of my grandfathers, both of them died when I was very young. I did learn two interesting things about them recently:

1)My paternal grandfather rode the rails during the Great Depression.

2)My maternal grandfather played a round of golf at the Exeter golf course in England on June 5, 1944. I have the scorecard. He drove trucks for the navy, so obviously he wasn't in the invasion force. It was still a weird moment when I read the date.

I did know both of my grandmothers, though they have passed away. Both were patient saints. And they always had good candy.

[mollygrue]

EDIT EARLIER POST--100 YEARS

[Northcott]

My paternal grandfather and grandmother were 19 and 17 years old respectively when they were married. They went on to have 13 children, and remained married until my grandfather died in his 70's.

He was known for being a hard drinker. He started working in the iron ore mines as a teenager, in the days before they were automated. Ponies drew the iron up in broad carts, dynamite loosened the earth, and men with shovels took care of the middle ground. Miners worked ten hour shifts, and were expected to move 2 tonnes of ore per hour. Among strong men, my grandfather was known for his strength. He was also known for knocking people flat when drunk.

He was a stern disciplinarian who ruled his family with an iron fist. My uncle Bill came home after his week-night curfew, 11:00 pm, at twenty years of age. My grandfather was waiting for him on the porch. Bill made a break for it, running like Hell down the lane -- Bill was no slouch in the athletics department, and was supposed to go to the Montreal Canadians training camp before my grandfather nixed it to make him get a real job (and did the same to my father, who was being looked at by the Leafs, iirc). Bill ran down that lane with my grandfather beating him with a rubber boot the whole frickin' way.

The flipside was his wicked sense of humour. He loved a good prank, and laughed at what some other folks might consider appropriate. He taught me how to cuss when I first started speaking, and laughed himself silly at my mother's reaction. At a family Christmas party, my mother being very uptight about such things, she refused to drink at all. My grandfather, not trusting anybody who wouldn't drink (though apparently he liked my mother in spite of this glaring flaw), kept putting a drop in her drink here, a drop there, whenever she wasn't looking. She was plastered by the end of the night, and had no idea why.

When he was a child, he once shaved half his father's beard off. My great-grandfather was an angry, abusive drunk. Passed out stone cold from the booze, my grandfather lathered up the old man's face and shaved off exactly half his beard, from under his nose up to his one ear. He then ran away from home for a few days so he wouldn't be killed upon the old fellow waking.

Cancer took him in the end. He was given two months to live, and didn't bother telling anybody as he didn't want a big fuss made over it. Two years after the diagnosis, he passed on. While he was still lucid, several months before the end, an old acquaintance came to visit whom my grandfather hadn't seen in decades. He refused to see the man, and had him sent away. When asked why, my grandfather responded that this fellow had cheated on his wife and walked away from his family shortly after -- and he had no use for a man who did that. Didn't want to see his face or hear his voice.



My paternal grandmother was a bloody force of nature. Completely clannish. Born into the family? You were gold. Outsider? God help you. She disliked many of the people who married her children and gave them an awful time of it. She could be remarkably mean in the way she treated them, and reduced several of the wives to tears at one point or another. Often repeatedly.

The flipside of this is that when shit hit the fan, she didn't blink or hesitate. After my old man walked out on us, she disowned him. After referring to his 2nd wife as "that dirty slut", which she did out of habit, she'd cross herself and ask the Lord's forgiveness. It killed her to disown one of her own, but he'd betrayed family, and there was no greater sin to my grandparents.

There are tales of her throwing heavy glass baby bottles across the room and catching her own children in the head with them, on purpose, if they lipped her off. A half-dozen screaming children at any one time, and twin babies sick and squalling, a teenage girl who chooses that moment to lip her mother off is treading on thin ice. ;) On the other hand, there was no question that she'd kill the poor son of a bitch who ever harmed one of her own.

She was thrifty and determined. And no wonder. By the time my grandfather died, he left more than enough money for my grandmother to live on comfortably for the remaining dozen or so years of her life -- in spite of having had 13 kids, and his never having worked as anything more than a labourer. She used to re-use the flour sacks to make clothes for her siblings when she was young, and did the same for some of her children. I can't begin to count the number of sweaters, scarves, mitts, and hats she knit for me when I was growing up.

[Janos]

Paternal - Grandfather - Alcoholic professional boxer from Ohio who also worked in a steel mill when he was sober enough to do so. Believed that beating people kept them in line. A violent bully who died at 50.

Paternal - Grandmother - From an old Polish family but never talked about her roots much beyond that. Tells the old story that we are descended from Vlad the Impaler and fled from the peasents that killed him. Has no real evidence to back it up other than the name Tepes going back 200 or so years on her side of the family. Crazy as a loon, and twice as mean as an angry coon. Lived to be 77 and hated everything and everyone for pretty much every year of that.

Paternal - Step-Grandfather - RAF pilot who flew in the Battle of Britain and got Ace status. Was knighted for his flight record and retired from the military and came to America in the 60ies. Alcoholic Catholic churchgoer 7 days a week. A living saint for putting up with my grandmother for years. Served her hand and foot. Deceased.

Maternal - Grandfather - Infantry trooper in WW2, died of shrapnel complications about 10 years after the war at age 42. I apparently look just like him. Nice quiet guy.

Maternal - Grandmother - Narcisist who was crazy as a loon since her husband died. Had packrat syndrome and had her house condemned for being a safety hazard on two seperate occasions. Kept 20 or so cats in her house. Guilt-tripped everyone mercilessly. Deceased.

My family isn't much for keeping family history. We can't go back much farther than my grandparents, and they couldn't go back any farther than their parents (which didn't even really get passed down).

Men on my dad's side of the family rarely live past 50.

Men on my mom's side of the family have a nasty habit of dying in wars.

[Glass]

If I don't get along well with my parents, my grandparents almost made up for all that. My father's parents were two of the best people I've ever known. My grandmother was a little woman(and I mean Hallahanian in proportion) who could be both loving, and brook absolutely no shit from anyone. She didn't pretend to be high-class, she was blue-collar and proud of the fact; worked at the same school cafeteria as my maternal grandmother(it's how my parents met, through them), loved White Castle hamburgers(after she moved to Florida, that forsaken land with no White Castles, we'd have them the first night every time her and Grandpa came up to visit), and her little white dog(who she was once humorously confused with). Funniest story about Grandma was when Uncle Joey, in his younger days, puffed out his chest and told her that he was bigger than her, trying to prove that yeah, he was bigger, you can't do a thing to me, etc. Grandma hit him in the stomach and doubled him over, and it's hard to be taller than someone, even someone who's 5'1", when you're doubled over clutching your stomach.
Grandpa was as laid-back as Grandma was a hard-ass, at least with the grandkids. He was always happy to just sit and listen to people talk, but when you got him talking, there was no stopping him. He would always be quick to help out, or just shoot the breeze with someone, no matter who they were. He worked as a laborer his entire life, and was one of the wisest men I ever met, he also seemed to have been the origin of the belief all Smith men have that we're nigh indestructible, unto death(Grandpa kept trying to get out of his deathbed, even with a broken leg). He rode his bike well into his twilight years and admitted to me that had he known he was going to live as long as he had, he would've done a few things different in his younger years(I don't know exactly what those things are).

OK, so not exactly what was looked for, but I was on a roll. I have to imagine they were completely head over friggin' heels in love with each other, because you could tell they were in love right up until they died. Grandma had a way of making you feel loved, even as she was ready to smack the crap out of you, Grandpa loved to eat(last line at his funeral was my Uncle Eddie saying tearfully "ok, now as Dad would say, 'why are we here when there's food waiting?'"), loved to drink, and had a good word to say about everyone. He was an optimist tempered by my grandmother's pragmatism, and they worked well like that.

[Harry]

My grandparents were farmers. Tobacco in North Carolina, mother's side, and cotton in Tennessee, father's side. The men were hardworking, generally quiet, bullish men. Their wives tended to their home and the folks who helped work them.

My mother's father was a hard man, with a rough temper, but he and my grandmother gallivanted around a little bit when they were young. Highly intelligent, both of them, and not people to cross. Fans of the Yankees ball team, haters of the Kennedy's, raised kids who became hippies and liberals mostly, Bill Monroe all the time on the radio. Episcopalians.

My father's father was a strong man, with a keen wit and a biting sense of humor, but often quiet. My grandmother was serious and chatty. They didn't gallivant when they were young. Strong sense of morals, strongly supportive of and opinionated on conservative issues of the time, but liberal in ways not very accepted in the Old South. Both were racists, but were well known for always giving a man a fair shake regardless of color. Tina Turner/Anna Mae Bullock often shared a place at the lunch table before her sisters died and she moved on. My grandfather especially was known for his ability to turn a subtle joke that would be remembered and retold for years and years. Fans of no sports, lovers of Clement and Gore Senior, Delmore Brothers and Lawrence Welk all the time. Southern Baptists.

[Xavier Lang]

Paternal Grandfather - Depot agent. He lived in North Dakota and work on the railroad. He never missed a day of work for illness. The only time he ever went to a hospital for himself, he died there on the operating table in his 80's. For the first 20 years of my life I thought his first name was Slim because I never heard anyone refer to him as anything other than Slim, Dad, or Grandpa. He was 6'2" and weighed about 145-150lbs until he started losing weight at the end of his life. I remember him warning me that they used strange words in the crosswords like "ion". He had always been good with tools and machinery. My brother is similar in build to him except an inch taller and a few pounds heavier. I liked him but we never had a lot in common.

Paternal Grandmother - Mother of 10 including a set of twins. She suffered from alzheimers for most of the time that I was old enough to remember so I never got a chance to know her.

Maternal Grandfather - Collector of exotic animals. He would buy animals from sailors who were returning to port. Monitor lizards, tortoises large enough a child could sit on the back of while they walked around, an eagle, snakes, ferrets, cats, dogs, rabbits and other things. He had a gift for living creatures. He always kept more than my grandmother knew about and more than she wanted him to have. I always enjoyed feeding the turtles as a kid. I never understood why people like box turtles because they were so tiny compared to the real thing. I know he ended up donating lots of animals to zoos when regulations said he could no longer have them. Strong as an ox and friendly. He smoked cigars, taught us card games and took us to the beach. I remember him giving me books because he saw me reading some of his. I remember collecting crab traps with him and watching him cook crabs for dinner. I didn't like the crab so he ate mine, which was just fine with him. He died in his 80s. I miss him sometimes though my brother has many of his same gifts with animals.

MaternalGrandmother - She was scandalously older than my grandfather when they married so she never told anyone her age. Her gravestone is wrong because my grandfather knew how big of a deal it was to her. She was in her late 70's or early 80's when she died, I don't know. She died before I got to know her well. All of my memories of her are of a nice wrinkly lady I got to hang out with. I recall me being a brat but her never responding in kind or being anything other than happy to see me. Makes me sad thinking back. I wish I would have had more time with her. I wasn't born until she was already in her late 60's.

Maternal Grandmother - My grandfather's second wife. Wonderful little Italian lady. Mentally sharp as a razor. She ran the accounting department for a major power company in the North East until she was forced into early retirement at 62 because she wasn't male or college educated. She lived another 41 years without her mind ever slowing down or degrading. She remember names, faces, details, phone numbers, could tell stories about her childhood, stories about my grandfather or her first husband without precision. She was still watching the market and investing up until her death. I remember her being happy I was going into computers because she knew it was an important field for the future. She was only about 4'10" by then and weighed a feather so me and my brother would have to kneel to hug her and I was always worried I was going to hurt her by accident. I remember saying goodbye at her 100th birthday party and knowing I wasn't going to see her again because she lived so far away. I remember being annoyed that she lost a lot of friends at the home she lived in when they found out she was 100 years old. Evidently people were afraid to be her friend because she was so old and "likely to die soon". She outlived many of them and died at 103.

[Ditto.]

Maternal Grandmother- 1926-1988
Daughter of an English-German homemaker and an English engineer. Her mother, my gram was also a warm person though I have only a few memories of her. Mostly a pretty blue dress, dark black hair with a dusting of grey and hugs. She died when I was 5. My grandmother, Gertrude dropped out of high school and began to work as a secretary in the draft office in Newark, NJ. She was in a local pin up calendar for GIs going overseas. I found a copy of the calendar in her effects when I was older- she was a beautiful woman. In her shoebox of letters I saw that she was carrying on with both my grandfather and an accountant from New York city. To the best of my knowledge looking at my uncles birth certificate she was pregnant before she was married. I guess we know who won. That said she adored my grandfather and was quite lost without him when he died. Granma was always sweet on her grandkids and tried to keep the drinking to a minimum around us. She stopped entirely when I helped myself at age 7 to the Canadian Club because I had a cough and she called it her cough medicine. My grandmother loved all of her grandchildren of which she had 4. I was very close with her, practically her shadow. When she passed away suddenly when I was 11 I was devastated. It has been nearly 20 years and I still miss her terribly.

My maternal grandfather (1924-1981)was close to a saint. Thomas was born into a family of 9 boys and 2 girls and all but one made it to adulthood. His mum was Irish and his Dad was Scots-Irish. He got the nickname Doc from a comic book, Doc Savage. His brothers apparently thought it fit. He and my grandmother never moved away from her parents going so far as to live in their house. My great-grandfather told my grandmother if she moved away they would never see her again. So he put his dream of his own house on the shelf and stayed in Newark and worked hard for 30 years at the RCA factory. He too dropped out of high school, losing a scholarship to university so he could enlist during WWII. The letters he wrote to my grandmother show he had no clue she was also seeing someone (and maybe never did) but it was clear he was crazy about her. After he left RCA, where he was very active in union politics (vote democrat!) he took a job working in the Hudson County Jail as the librarian. I remember him taking me by the hand and we took a tour of the place. I was no older than 5. We visited the whole jail- my mother hit the fucking roof. It was fun. He died of a heart attack shortly before my great grandmother died. My aunt (his daughter) and I found him. I tried to wake him up and thankfully didn't understand what happened. His family is very clannish - very warm and loving to the family and cold to those who aren't. It is a trait my mother has today and my sister and I to an extent.

My paternal grandmother. 1926-2006

Cold bitch. Grew up in Genoa and came to Jersey City NJ and worked in an embroidery factory in Union City. She met my pop pop there. From what my nonna told me about her own daugher she begged my pop pop not to marry her. This was not a nice woman. At all. Hit with a bag of nickles and a personality to match- she was unpleasent at best to be around. Nasty to my mother my sister and I disliked her intensely (see clannish). She was quite upset my father did not marry another Italian girl. When he brought home my mom who is blonde and blue eyed- she just about shit. Her treatement of her sons was appalling, their treatment of her in her later years spoke volumes. It was their wives and grandkids (who all hated her as well) who did the caregiving - I mean you cant leave people like that. She was cruel to my mother in the extreme and that transfered over to my sister. Elsie would alienate her friends, not apologize and watch her circle grow smaller. She died last november. I feel robbed I got her instead of my maternal grandmother.

Paternal Grandfather 1903-2001

Dino was a very cool guy- he would have to be to tolerate the nonsesne Elsie dealt out. He was born in the US, his family moved back in the teens to Venice, and they came back when Fascism was on the rise. He joined the merchant marines and went all over the world. A good looking man but short man(we cant figure why he married her) who seemed to have a girl in every port the family jokes there are aunts and uncles everywhere. When the war was over he started to work in the same emrboidery factory my grandmother workied in. This is probably the reason there was always so much shouting there- they were all deaf from the mechines. He married my grandmother after the war and they had two sons. My uncle Paul and my father Philip- so Italian Catholic it hurts. He beat prostate cancer and a bad heart. I remember him looking after my sister and I in the summers after my maternal grandmother passed on. We would sit on the stoop, play cards, eat figs and have water. Really alot of fun- the guy had a great sense of humor - so brazen but had such a cute face no one could get mad. He started to have kideny failure in his late 90s and he went down hill rapidly. He died quietly in his sleep.

[Dawnstar]

Both of my grandfathers were dead before I was even born. I have heard several stories about them but that is about it.

Now my grandmothers are a different story. I got to spend a good amount of time with both of them and learned a lot about their lives.

My maternal grandmother grew up rich. And when I say rich I mean she was driven to school by a driver and dropped her off and picked her up. The house she grew up in was HUGE. My mother has a picture of it in her place. It was torn down before I was born but it must have been amazing. My grandmother's family lost everything in the depression, the house, the money, and pretty much everything else. After that my grandparents got married. they started to make their own money. They owned a restaurant that did good business for a long time. While my mother was growing up she worked in said restaurant. My grandfather died 6 weeks before my parents got married. They sold the family restaurant. The 7 kids got married and moved out. And many years later when I was 4 or 5 my grandmother opened up a gift shop in the mountains. It was family run for a while and then was sold when I was like 13 or 14. My grandmother died when I was a senior in high school.

My paternal grandmother, do not know a lot about when she grew up but I know about your life as my father's mother. She and her husband owned a gas station, motel, and restaurant. So my father grew up helping out with the family businesses. They must have made a very nice living because all of my life my grandmother and my aunt did a lot of traveling. They went on 2 or 3 vacations a year all around the world. They went on cruises and hikes and safarri trips. I am so very jealous of her. My grandfather died 6 weeks after my parents got married and that is when they decided to sell all the family stuff. My grandmother died when I was 19 years old.

I loved both of my grandmothers very much but really wish I had had a chance to meet my grandfathers.

[Goblin Girl]

My paternal grandparents came to the US from Italy. They were Sicilian. My grandfather was the son of a landowner, my grandmother was a peasant. They were newlyweds, and his father sent them here because my grandfather was in some sort of trouble with the local law. That turned out to be a theme in his life.

Paternal Grandfather: he died when I was very small. Before my father died, so I must have been around two, two and a half. I met him once. I remember being shoved into a dark room that smelled really bad. He had uncontrolled diabetes, and had already had one of his legs amputated. The other was gangrenous, hence the horrid smell. I only stayed in that room for a few moments.

They called him Crazy Tony. My aunt Mary said that the best years of their childhood were when he was in prison. He was abusive even when sober, and when drunk it evidently got even worse. The prison sentence was for killing a man in a bar fight.

Paternal Grandmother: She died when I was 10. She was a short, round little Italian lady with no teeth. When they first came to this country, she worked in the garment district. She worked as a seamstress even into her 80s, when the arthritis finally became too severe for her to sew anymore. She embraced her new country and was quite proud of her US citizenship. She had been illiterate in her native tongue, but learned to read and write English, as she learned to speak it. She refused to speak Italian to her children, or teach it to them. They were Americans, and didn't need it, you see. She was a good cook, and I learned by watching her.

I used to be embarrased of her old world ways, but now I wish she had lived longer, so I could have gotten to know her better.

I don't know very much about my maternal grandparents, because my grandfather died when my mother was a teenager, and my grandmother died just a few months before my father did. There are pictures of her holding the baby me, but I don't have any memories of her. She was from Germany, and she also refused to speak German in front of her children or allow them to learn it, according to my mother.

[NGRI]

All of my grandparents are dead but I have fond memories of those that were alive during my lifetime.

Paternal Grandfather - He died 6 weeks before my parent got married. He worked for the electric company rising from meter reader to head of the department. My grandmother’s family was a traditional Irish family which means that their favorite activity was holding grudges. He was the only one that was liked and respected by all of her family so all of them would talk to him and he would pass information to the ones they “weren’t speaking to”.

Paternal Grandmother - She died when I was 7 so I have some memories of her. She immigrated from Ireland when she was 5 or 6. She still had a slight Irish accent. Her name was Bridget and she hated that name because it was an Irish farm girl name and the people who had immigrated a few years before her kept caller her greenhorn. She started calling herself Etta when she was about 10 and used that as her name even on official documents, marriage license, social security card etc. No one in my family, including my dad, knew that Bridget was her real name until after her death and someone got baptismal records from Ireland and there wasn’t any for Etta. Her surviving sister then told us the story. I don’t recall her talking bout her life but it must have been hard. She had 5 children but only 2 lived past the age of 18.

Maternal Grandfather - He died when my mom was a freshman in high school. I am told he was very funny and could play any musical instrument.He owned a construction company and had a contract with Shell Oil to build gas stations for them.

Maternal Grandmother - I remember her most of all. She would frequently baby sit for us and tell us great family stories. Her stories were so good that we, voluntarily stopped watching TV to hear them. Her husband died when she was about 40 so she had to go to work and raise 3 children under the age of 15. She never remarried or even dated, as far as I know.

[Black Angel]

Maternal Grandparents (both deceased):
I never really knew them that well, because they lived in England (Mum emigrated here to marry my father). Mum & I did go and visit them at the end of high school, but they were very sick, so I'm not sure I really got much from that experience.
-I know my grandmother had always been quite sickly, having had tuberculosis as a young adult, and having 1.5 lungs removed! This also lead to heart problems for her in later life. Because she was so sick, my mother & her sisters were often cared for by her aunt.
-My grandfather was pharmacist also (which I didn't find out until I'd already decided to study it for myself), who grew up in the days of apprenticeships. He never fought in the war, because he was in a required profession, and was needed to make medicines. He was pipe smoker and snuff-user, and after a stroke was hospitalised, where he continued to have many small strokes, because my grandmother kept taking him snuff, despite the hospital telling her it wasn't helping. :rolleyes:

Paternal grandparents:
Emigrated from England when my dad was at the end of high school. I know them a lot better from growing up around them, although it was mainly in a different state (ACT). My best memories are of traveling to Adelaide for Christmas, and the big family gatherings.
- My great-aunt (my grandmother's sister) has also been like an extra grandparent to our family. She never married, and lived with my grandparents until my grandmother started getting sick. She is a strong independent woman (although tiny in stature) who still lives alone, and drives herself around at well over 85.
- My grandmother (deceased) was a woman who prided herself on keeping a good home. She loved music (playing the piano) and sang in the church choir. My other strong memory of her is of her brushing my hair as a young child in front of her vanity mirror. She got Alzheimer's when I was in high school and spent the last 6 years of her life bed-ridden in a nursing home. I live in fear of this happening to me.
- My grandfather is still alive, although also suffering from Alzheimer's and in a nursing home. He is still coherent and not bed-ridden at this stage, just extremely forgetful and prone to wandering. I'm not sure what sort of work he did in England (possibly worked on an production line at a fish cannery?) but he also fought in WW2, and traveled to India as part of that. He never really wanted to talk about his war experiences - I can only assume bad shit happened (my grandma & great aunt also were both nurses in England during the war). After they moved over here, my grandparents started up a debt-collection business.

While being good people, my paternal grandparents ultimately are very 'stiff-upper-lip' English people, in the sense of not showing emotion. I think this has contributed to my dad being a fairly detached person who doesn't understand emotions in others (particularly boys) very well - meaning he doesn't hug my brothers, they shake hands. I find it really sad, and I also see elements of that in myself at times, which I try to get past.