It's official: Godtouched in Czech

Pevnost will translate and reprint Godtouched, which originally appeared in Strange Horizons. This is a particularly important step in my World Domination Plan since my maternal grandfather is Czech and will now love me for ever.

And you know me, I like to make the grandparents happy. They may be old and look frail, but anyone who'se survived the Korean War or the Spanish Civil War (respectively) while holding down three jobs or blackmarketing (respectively) to survive is guaranteed to keep an ace up their sleeve. And you know what? I'm not sure I wanna see that ace just yet. Besides, grandparents are sweet.

I have three surviving grandparents, which I think speaks well for my genes. My Spanish grandfather died more than ten years ago. During the Franco Dictatorship, he maintained his membership to the outlawed Communist Party and kept the card around his house. That's my definition of cojones, people. And before anyone starts screaming about commies, Spanish commies were the good guys during the dictatorship. Their connection to Russia was nominal at most and they were the only people putting up a decent underground and insurgency (There was also ETA, but we've all seen how they turned out. Anyone claiming that they're anything more than the black hole that attracts the psychopaths that any society seems to produce, regardless of social structure, needs to get their heads checked)

Then there's my Spanish grandmother. She didn't get much schooling, because her dad died when she was young and she started working as a seamstress at age 12. But she reads fast, man and when I mean fast, I mean faster than I did when I was 15. And that was really fast. I guess this comes from working at a kiosk for the last 60 years. You gotta scan the material. We've tried to get her to stop working, but she won't listen. She still spends a couple of hours each day helping my uncle. I guess it gives her something to do, but I wish she'd stay inside during the worst of the winter. She's 83 after all.

Grandparents on the American side. My grandma grew up in a German farm, with people who didn't speak much English. She was discouraged from going into MedSchool by some priest who told her to leave the well-paying jobs for men who had to support their families. She then went on to teach High School and have nine kids. She could have used the well paying job. Needless to say, she's very proud of me being a doctor. She writes poetry and does little craft things with paper and poems which have been showcasted in the Milwaukee art Museum. She ran marathons until recently. You go grandma!

And then there's grandpa Ptacek. Jeremy or Jaroslav in Czech. I can't even remember all the things he's done. He's the guy who had three jobs to put 9 kids through college. And he flew an airforce jet. And he was in the reserve, some. Like the Spanish grandma, he narrowly escaped death more than a few times. In Spain, we call this "being born with a flower on your ass". It means you're born lucky, dunno what the flower has to do with it. Anyway, I sure hope it's a hereditary condition.