Seven facts about the ancestors

They were short. They could squat on their haunches for hours. They knew the right times for things. They remembered what they heard in a way that we who have been trained by the measured tread of text cannot. They had bad teeth, but better than the farmers who followed them. They squinted a lot. They knew every conceivable grief except for the small, dull kind that accompanies the purchase of some interchangeable part.