One of the shorter life histories I had heard—by a good hour. I hadn't even made it halfway through my sandwich. So I started on my story—growing up in a small town in western Mass, no brothers or sisters, the sad demise of my father, and the fact that my mother still lived out there and whom I visited on a regular basis.

And this is where it took the weird turn. I started to talk about my hellish job, but I could see she wasn't paying attention. Granted, my job was boring, but I didn't usually lose them quite that fast. She interrupted me as I took a breath.

"No grandparents?" she asked.

"Uh, no. They'd be about a hundred years old now, at least."

"Tell me about them."

"Okay," I said slowly. I told her what I could remember about my mother's parents, which wasn't much. They weren't very interesting people. But that's not what she was waiting for.

"And your father's parents?"

"My grandmother died right after I was born. I don’t really know much about her. My grandfather was a little more interesting." So I told her the story of him falling out of the plane.

"Wow, that's fascinating," she said, showing more enthusiasm than the story deserved. "What did your father say about him?

"Not much. He was less than two when his father died."

"Was he left any of your grandfather's personal effects or mementos?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I haven't gone through my father's stuff. I haven't cleaned out his house yet." Was she trying to decide if I was worth robbing? "Why are you so curious about my grandfather?"

She backed off a bit. "I guess because my grandparents all came from small Midwestern towns and never did anything with their lives. To be a flyer during World War II must have been exhilarating."

"Not so much for my grandfather, I would think."

"True. But haven't you ever been curious about him? Wasn't your father?"

"Not really. And if my father was, he never mentioned it. You have to understand, he never knew his father, so there was no one other than his mother to ask questions of. I'm sure she told him some things, but if you don't have the connection yourself, there's only so far you can go."

"But you have to know something. Everybody knows things about their grandparents. Think! There has to be something." She was becoming agitated. When I didn't respond, she calmed down.

"Sorry," she said. "It's just that family history is important to me. I think everyone should research their roots. What was your grandfather like as a kid? What were his parents like. What was it like living in New York at that time?"

She had slipped. I never said anything about where my family was from. I only ever mentioned Boston and western Mass. New York never came up. I decided not to call her on it.

I don't know if she knew she had slipped or whether she was just acknowledging to herself that I was a dead-end street, but the energy immediately went out of the conversation. I tried to make some suggestions about her apartment hunting, but she brushed them off. She said she had to go—she had an appointment to see a place—and she was gone. It was the shortest date in recorded history—forty-five minutes at best, and ten of those were spent waiting for our food.