I'm ashamed to admit it, but I actually tried to talk to Trapp—excuse me, Uncle Lester —about his will. No, I didn't ask him if he liked books that had dead people in them. But as my mother says, I can be pretty clever when I'm not being stupid. I decided I'd get him talking about religion, because if you think about it, most religions are all about death.
"Why don't you play bridge on Sunday?" I began as we drove to the bridge studio.
"Four times a week is about as much as I can take," he said.
It wasn't the answer I had hoped for. "Do you go to church on Sunday?" I asked.
"Hah!"
This was getting me nowhere.
"Do you believe in God?" I asked.
Another "Hah!"
Maybe my idea wasn't so great. I once had a teacher who told me I'd be twice as smart if I was half as smart as I thought I was. I'm still trying to figure that one out.
"I'm aware there is a greater reality, of which I'm totally unaware," my uncle said, surprising me. "I imagine I'm a lot like Captain and the radio."
He explained that he had been listening to his radio earlier, and that his dog, Captain, had been in the room with him. He said there was a report about Barack Obama, then one about global warming and the melting ice caps in Greenland.
"Let me ask you something," he said. "Which part of the radio broadcast do you think Captain understood?"
I didn't think his dog actually understood any of it, but of course I didn't say that. "Maybe global warming," I tried. "Like the way animals can predict earthquakes."
"Don't be absurd," he scoffed. "Do you really think Captain knew what the newscaster was saying?"
"Well, no," I said, feeling stupid. "But that seemed like too obvious an answer."
"Do you think my dog even knew that the noises coming from the radio were words, meant to convey ideas?"
"Not really," I said.
"Captain was oblivious," said Trapp. "Not only did he not understand a word the newscaster said, he did not even know there was anything to understand . I've got an atlas in my bookcase. Do you think it might help Captain if I showed him a map of Greenland?"
"No," I said. "I'm aware dogs can't read maps."
"Not only can't they read, they don't even understand the concept of reading. Dogs, like every other animal, have evolved to be able to function in their limited world. They know what they need to know, and are oblivious to everything else. So what makes you think you and I are any different?"
"I can find Greenland on a map," I said.
"Congratulations, you're smarter than my dog, hah!"
I laughed too.
"Humans have evolved in order to function in our own limited world," he said, "just like every other animal. Yes, we're smarter. We couldn't outrun tigers or outfight bears, so we had to out-think them. But just because some of us are smarter than kangaroos, it doesn't mean we know everything."
I laughed at "some of us."
"Of course, I don't have to worry about tigers or where my next meal is coming from," he said, "so I use my brain and its two hundred and fifty thousand years of evolutionary development to play bridge, but that's beside the point."
"And the point is ?" I asked.
"Okay, you were probably taught there are five senses," he said. "We see, hear, touch, smell, and taste. But how do we know those are the only five? What are the senses we don't have? What are we failing to perceive?"
It didn't seem right for me to point out that he no longer had all five senses. Or maybe, I considered, it was his loss of sight that made him wonder what else he was missing.
"We may be surrounded by some greater reality, to which we are oblivious. And even if we could somehow perceive it in some entirely new way, it is extremely doubtful we would be able to comprehend what we perceived."
"Like Captain listening to your radio," I said.