The Math of War and Piece

A Family Myth

In our family, “pulling an Uncle Ken” is shorthand for absentminded brilliance. The legend everyone tells begins on the way to Gettysburg, when he and Aunt Grace took Lucy and Jimmy out for a Sunday picnic.

Lucy needed a bathroom break, so Uncle Ken pulled into the overflow lot beside a Barbara Fritchie. Grace walked Lucy to the ladies’ room. Ken and Jimmy headed to the men’s room, still arguing about the rate of cannon fire and the angle of elevation needed to hit a target at distance.

They finished first. They returned to the car. They kept talking. And Uncle Ken drove off.

He didn’t notice his wife and daughter were missing until he started looking for a place to picnic. It took him nearly half an hour to circle back to the gas station.

That’s where the story usually ends. But my mother once told me the part that rarely gets mentioned: Aunt Grace made no move to rush when he finally returned. She and Lucy finished their Barbara Fritchie lunch and a piece of strawberry pie before returning to the car. A small correction in the math of their marriage.