I’ve met Robin three times in her short life, and I’m told that today was the first time she stuck her tongue out at her parents. It will not be the last. I don’t know Robin well yet, and I’m not yet moved to carry photos of her around. I have never bothered anyone with a photo of hers (they would just pull out one of theirs), although I have been putting her up on the blog, and am well aware that an awful lot of people like seeing her spirit emerge. Looks like a strong spirit, she has a habit of going viral.

Having a granddaughter has brought about one change in me already, I am thinking about her future, what kind of world she might live in and how she might be treated. Honestly, this was not something I thought much about  before Robin, I am not inclined towards romanticizing the past or gloomy predictions about the future.

Her mother and grandmother are both strong women and know how to take good care of themselves, I imagine she will have good and strong role models to follow. Still, I know a lot of women and every one of them has at least one horror story to tell about men.

Saturday, at the Open House, I was standing by the rear gate and a young couple were standing with their young son Robbie, a middle-school student from Westchester, N.Y. Readers of the blog, they had come up to see the Open House. Robbie had a younger sister, she was six or seven, I guessed,  and I heard her turn and ask her parents, “what does it mean to be a “pussy. Robbie called me a pussy, and he said he was going to grab my pussy.”

They were startled, as I was, but I think we all knew what had happened as soon as the words came out of her mouth. I wondered for a second if he meant a pussy cat, even though I knew better as soon as I thought it.

It turned out Robbie was required to read his local newspaper – it is published online – and report on the news for his social studies class.  He has been monitoring the presidential elections. He came across the story about a presidential candidate’s comments on an audio recording about women, and he also saw a link to the tape itself, which he listened to several times. “It was homework!,” he explained hurriedly to his suddenly angry father.

I could see in some sort of way Robbie knew he was in trouble, that he had done something wrong to his sister, and his parents took him off to the apple tree to have a talk with him. They apologized to me, assuring me Robbie was a good boy. I didn’t doubt it. They were mortified.

I work hard to resist this left-right thing of hating the other, I see it as a cancer, a disease that no patriot would really want to catch, it hurts our democracy. I don’t need to be hating Donald Trump, I just don’t care to vote for him or see  him running my country. I am the grandson of immigrants, the choice is not hard for me, and I care about facts and truth, but I understand it is a hard issue for many people.

I hope no one ever sees Robin in that way or treats her in so assaultive and frightening a manner. I a sure Donald Trump is a good man in many ways, he works hard and loves his family and has strong and compelling ideas about how working class people have been left behind in America. I know from living here in upstate New York that many of the things his supporters are enraged about are true, I see it every day.

I’m sorry Mr. Trump is so disturbed and broken that these arguments are  lost in his dysfunctional and angry way He just doesn’t seem to know how to talk normally, and within the normal human spectrum of dialogue. He could have done a lot of good.

What, I wondered, would I tell Robbie if he asked me why it was wrong to use that word? I’m not sure, I would try not be angry and make him feel small. Clearly, he knew not of what he had done, but he had seen a presidential candidate do it. How confusing would that have been for me when I was in middle school?  I guess I would tell him that it is a hurtful word, and hurtful words should not be used on anyone, male or female.

As a man, I know the young pay attention to what others do, especially older and powerful men. I did. I paid attention to the words and deeds of  Clarence Darrow and Thomas Merton and John Kennedy, and then Martin Luther King. I listened to them, and modeled myself after them and use their words and thoughts to this day.

I quoted them often when I was looking for words.

After his talk with his son,  the father, a registered Republican, came up to me and said he was disturbed about what he had seen. We can’t control the world, he said, not with computers and cell phones, he was very concerned that Robbie would assume that if a powerful and much-admired man (he was planning to vote for Mr. Trump) said that, why shouldn’t he? Could it really be wrong? Could that be undone, he wondered, by anything he might say? Was it now implanted in his son’s consciousness, this awful way of thinking about women, even his sister?

Would Robbie take his world against the wider world? He did not ever want his son to be treating women in that way, or thinking of them in that way. This is an awful thing, he said, I fear for what is going on in the minds of so many young men. Who are they to follow in our world?

I told this good man for being so thoughtful about this, on behalf of my granddaughter in particular. How said, I said, that this was not part of the conversation we all should be having about women right now, everyone is thinking about it.

If someone said that to Maria, she would break a bowl over his head, at best. He might never walk straight again. The father asked me if I thought this was locker room talk. What might Robin say or do?

Did I ever hear these words, he asked?

And I said no, I never heard this in a locker room, and I did hear a lot of  raunchy stuff. I knew right away that those boys were just mimicking their fathers and older brothers, it never sounded natural to me.

I never heard that kind of talk anywhere, I said,  I never spoke it or had it in my mind. I never heard my father, uncle, grandfather or brother ever say anything like that, in private or anywhere else.  Thinking that way about a women was utterly alien to me, and I confessed to the father that  it did concern me on behalf of my granddaughter. But it was not my business to tell this man anything about his son, and I had no words for him that he did not have for himself.

I don’t know who this father will vote for, and that is none of my business either.  I don’t need to hear who everyone is going to vote for.

Hearing the words and watching that debate made my stomach sink, it made me sad for our country, and embarrassed that the world’s first and most modern democracy could have plunged, into my lifetime, to such depths. I love the idea of America, and this breaks my heart a bit.

I wanted to apologize to the world, to my granddaughter. I guess we messed it up this round, I want to say. I believe women are on the rise, they may just save us.

I think Robin deserves better and I hope she gets what she deserves, a better world, and when I saw that she had stuck her tongue at her parents – and not for the first time – it gave me hope for the future. I think I will go and talk to her this week or next.