I really like the older generation.

I have a lot in common with them. A slight bemusement with technology, dodgy knees, a love of old-fashioned, coronary inducing Sunday dinners.

The thing is, I don’t really have that many older people in my life. My parents are at the youngest end of quite large families, and so my grandparents had passed long before I was old enough to appreciate them.

I did, for a brief period in my life, have some adoptive grandparents. They belonged to my girlfriend at the time. Everyone else would whine about them… boring, interfering… but I never saw that. I was just so happy to have people in my life that had lived one. I don’t see them any more. I guess I could have gone through a long custody battle, but that would have been just odd.

Which takes me to my point. Vonnegut was my media grandfather.

Media relations (not that type of media relations) are people who you are only related to through a desire to fill a gap in your family, and the ability to put reality towards the back of your mind.

I’m aware of the similarities between having a media relation and just being a stalker. It’s a fine line.

Anyway, Vonnegut fitted the criteria for my surrogate relation. He was a gentleman of a certain age, and had lived a life not unlike some of my real grandparents. Furthermore he was witty and always available for advice. A role model, as such.

Sure, he would tell stories that wouldn’t really go anywhere, and he had a tendency to repeat himself in his later years… Go on, Grandpa, tell us again that story about the Asimov joke at the Humanist Association… But that’s exactly what I was after.

The problem is, even media relations are mortal. And now we’re approaching the third anniversary of his death… And I do miss him, terribly. The world is a little less interesting without him in it.

It makes me wonder if it’s time for me to find a new media grandparent…