Why does my grampa do stupid things?
Deer Dale
I’m a 7 yr old girl. I go to school and have lots of friends. They come to my house and I go to theres. We have fun times but grampa does stupid things like put moms bra on his face and pritend to be blind. He calls it magik. I don’t think its magik at all. I think its stupid. I had a new girl over yisterday. She’s so cool. I wanted to impres her and be friends but grampa made us close our eyes and when we opened them he was sitting in the air like on a toilet made a bad sound and dropped a paper ball behind him like a number two. I was sooooooooooooooooo embarrassed. Why does my grampa do stupid things?
Signed,
Hes so stupid
Dear HSS:
You sound like a very smart little girl. The sort who will grow up to be a Wall Street lawyer, helping big corporations screw people out of their life savings and making widows and orphans homeless.
Either that or you’ll take the opposite tack. Become an environmentalist and spend your life trying to save the earth by protesting oil companies, chaining yourself to trees and throwing soup at priceless paintings.
Either way, your world is wide open. There are so many things you haven’t done yet: fight with your parents, take up smoking and betray a friend by telling everyone her secrets. That and get drunk, throw up all over yourself and lose your virginity to a boy you hardly know.
But your grampa’s been through all that. And more. Much more. He’s had friends die, businesses fail and his heart broken.
(Half of all marriages end in divorce. The other half, in murder.)
Truth is, life has many stages and you have to go through them all. In the immortal words of The Byrds: To everything there is a season; a time to be born; a time to die; a time to plant; a time to reap; a time to get drunk; a time to get drunk again.
Now, having seen it all and with nothing but death to look forward to, he realizes that life is absurd, a gigantic joke God plays upon us.
So naturally he hams it up, doing stupid things to make you, his precious little grandchild laugh. And when you were younger, you did, your cheeks stained with tears as you roared with laughter.
But then, bit by bit, you began to grow up, and, as your eyes opened to the larger world around you, you made the mistake of taking life seriously and believing the bullshit society throws at you.
Which, believe it or not, makes your grampa sad: behind that clown’s smile is the heavyhearted knowledge that you have already set foot on the drab path to becoming just as serious and severe as everyone else.
(Contrary to what most people think, it’s not lack of knowledge that makes one a fool but rather, too much of it.)
So next time he does something stupid like wear your mom’s panties on his head or make fart noises with his armpit, don’t groan. Play along instead. You’ll be glad you did. Because, odds are, he’ll be dead soon and, after he’s gone, all the embarrassment will fade and you’ll remember him as he was: a kind old man who just wanted to make you laugh. Hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Dale
Hi. If you’ve made it this far, you probably liked the story. So why not check out some others at my Medium page? https://medium.com/dear-dale
