If you couldn’t tell from my Rib bio, it’s important to me that everybody knows my grandfather is kind of a huge deal. I’d kind of known about his sky-high status for a long time, but it really sunk in when I was in tenth grade, when I was invited to some awards ceremony he was being honored at. I was impressed and all, but I still didn’t totally care (I was bummed I had to buy a “fancy” shirt for the occasion), and mostly tuned out the presenter who introduced him, the one who actually specified what his accomplishments were.
That’s why I was completely blindsided, when, at 20 years old, I was innocently scrolling through the Wikipedia page for GIF and noticed my grandfather’s name just plopped in the middle of the article. I’d always known he had his own page cause of his boring important work, but I didn’t know his important work was GIF-related! That is the opposite of boring. That is some grade-A interestingfascinatingcaptivating important work.
This was when I really started caring about his crowning achievements. It became my own pride and joy, knowing I come from grade A GIF lineage. I used it as my fun fact for every ice breaker, for raising my own street cred, and for making sure that everybody knew I was basically royalty.
Finally, two weeks ago, the moment all this self-adulation had been leading up to finally arrived. I got to learn about my grandfather’s compression algorithm in my Algorithms class. That’s right. My very own grandfather, my dad’s dad, was on my syllabus. Here are some of the perks that come with being related to a genius:
- Automatic A. Look at the last name on my homework. Now look at the last name on the handout. It’s the same thing. You know what that means? I know more than you. My word is law. I deserve an A. Thanks in advance.
- People will poke you and text you in class to be like, “That’s your last name!”. That’s right, bitches. I have friends who know my last name. #popular
- I have the final say in the correct pronunciation of GIF. Because the GIF would not exist without the help of my bloodline, I am the only person whose opinion matters. It’s GIF like God, which is what my grandfather is for writing this algorithm.
- I get to say, “Do you know who my father’s father is?” Never have I felt more like the child of Draco Malfoy! Especially since both my father and grandfather are bald and don’t possess the Malfoy family’s glorious hair genes. It’s addicting, the power that sentence holds.
- I get an excuse to bond with my family, whom I love and miss desperately. Other than the couple seconds where I made sure to get a snap of the board during class, I was poised with my camera, waiting to capture the perfect video to send to my extended family’s group chat. They responded, I responded, and we had a nice lil back-and-forth that would not have occurred otherwise. My family’s the best. It’s nice to have that affirmed by my Ivy League professor.
TL;DR, this is how it feels to have a famous important grandfather:
And if you don’t have one? I guess you can just live vicariously through Michelle Obama GIFs. Courtesy of my gramps, of course.
Image via Leeron Lempel’s mama and via.