|
A few weeks ago I wrote about an email exchange with my granddaughter Megan. (See the column “A Dudely Papaw” in the archive section here.) I got a lot of reaction to that column, so I invited 14 year-old Megan to write a piece for this space. She writes in response to my request that she teach me how to be a more hip papaw. She told me about 2 years ago to say “dude” frequently and buy me some jeans. So I've been developing my dudeliness. She's becoming my favorite writer for the young at heart.
Papaw
Meeting someone for the first time is always a stressful, if not awkward experience. One will ask, “How are you? How are your kids?” The other will then expound to them the woes of parenthood, how their job sucks, and their recent scrap with their spouse. At this point, the first person's eyes are glazing over, and their thoughts have drifted to things equal to the same importance as cheese, or a hockey game. Luckily, neither you nor I will have to endure this mind-numbing process today in our first official meeting. Hello :-).
Today I would like to share with you a sincerely fond memory of mine, including my Papaw and many other of my near-and-dear-to-my-heart family members. Well, one day a few years ago, papaw needed to do some work on the roof. My sister Caity, my cousins Wesley and Shea, my aunt Susannah and I were over at Papaw's to help him out. We were asked to construct a scaffolding. Now, this sounds simple enough, however of course it turned out not to be. For some mysterious reason, Papaw decided not to give us hardly any directions on how to build this dude. Which to me seemed pretty insane, since it was going to be used to support him. There was an extremely large chance of us youngins, messing up this scaffold, in turn, causing our beloved Papaw to fall to his near death. (I mean let's face it, Papaw's indestructible like Superman or Chuck Norris.) Anyway, the only instruction I can recall from that day was how to turn on the saw (also not very smart of Papaw). After doing some research, I've discovered it takes a human being of average intelligence 1-2 hours to build a straightforward scaffold. It took the five of us, whom I believe to be above average intelligence, 6 hours! Madness! After we had finished, the only thing left to do was name it. In this family a work of art does not go unfinished. I believe it was my cousin Wesley who named the piece of art, “The Dude.” Probably this was because the infamous “Dude Conversation J” happened either on that day or recently before.
I now hold in my hands a special token of that day: an actual board from the scaffold itself. You can expect to find it on EBay in the near future. Ha-ha, no, I could never give away that sparkling memory. Inscribed upon that plywood quite profoundly is: The Dude. And it is The Dude.
And that's all she wrote. :-)
Megan
Susannah, Megan, Wes, Caity, Shea
|
