For 20 years, we took our kids to Holiday World. Our goal is to restart the tradition with the grandkids. The pandemic means the tradition probably won’t restart this year.

Who needs an amusement park anyway? On the first near-perfect day this summer, I decided to repaint fence posts around our pasture. Once painted white but peeling, they needed an update. I decided on bright red, to match the barns. Well, they were once bright red. They’re now dirty red. They’re on the docket to get painted this summer, too.

Just after lunch, I enlisted my grandson, Graham, age 10, to help. I opened the 2-gallon bucket of paint, began stirring with a paint stick, and the questions began.

“Grandpa, why do you stir paint?”

“Because some parts separate. See the white swirls?”

“Oh, yeah, you want it to be all red, right?” Graham asked.

“That’s right — it needs to all look the same.”

By then he was off opening the package of the new paint scraper. Before I knew it, he had already figured out how to take the blade off. Or at least I hoped he figured it out and it didn’t just fall off.

“Don’t worry, Grandpa, I’ve got this,” he said. “It fits right back on, see? It’s adjustable.”

“How do you know how to work stuff like that?” I asked.

“I watch YouTube. I teach myself,” he answered.

Well, I guess that’s a good thing.

Painting begins

Before I knew it, Graham was scraping the old paint off posts. “I wonder if it works better pushing it down or pulling it up?” he asked.

“Whichever way works best. You may even need to go sideways,” I said.

“Going down seems to work,” he said. “No, wait, maybe up works better.”

Once his fascination with the paint scraper subsided, I handed him a paintbrush. I was already busy coating posts with red paint.

“Wow, this brush is just the right width for the post, Grandpa,” he said. “This is cool.”

So cool, in fact, that he already had paint on his shirt — no surprise there.

“It’s OK, it’s an old shirt,” he said when I pointed it out. “It’s my paint shirt … or at least, it is now.”

He also had a few drips on his barn boots. From experience, I knew better than to wear my new barn boots, so I put on the old pair. Sure enough, they soon sported red dots.

“Grandpa, you should make long strokes going down. See how it shines?” he said.

“It shines because it’s a satin finish. It’s all they had on hand,” I answered. “How did you learn how to make those strokes, anyway?

“From my art teacher, Grandpa. She says you finish with strokes in one direction and it looks cool. Plus, I’ve seen it on YouTube videos.”

“Why don’t you watch some YouTube videos on math? It could use some work,” I said.

“Math videos are boring,” he answered. “Man, this is fun. We’re going to be painting all summer, fixing up all these barns, right, Grandpa?”

“That’s right, Graham. It’s going to be a long summer.”

And so it went: nonstop question and comment, for three hours. By then, all 20 fence posts in the first section were painted.

“Well, we just wasted three hours of our life painting,” he quipped. “But at least the fence looks cool, right, Grandpa?”

Whatever you say, Graham.