I Bet It Was HIM!

Once upon a time, two Saturdays ago, my grandson had just been dropped off for a visit and wanted to race.
     "Why not?" I thought to myself. He's only four-years-old. What chance does he have of beating me, The Great One? That's what they used to call me in back in school when I was on the track team. Well... that's what I used to call myself, but the nickname never stuck.
     My grandson yells "GO!" and we're off like a flash. Make that two flashes.
     My mind was working like the computer Steve Jobs could only dream about making, analyzing every movement of my body and making adjustments as required. My legs were moving like pistons in the engine of a Lamborghini. My lungs, taking in huge gobs of air, were like the after burners on the SR-71 Blackbird flying at MACH 3.
     Man, I was in The Zone.
     When--all of sudden--I see my grandson (Did I mention he's only four-years-old?) moving away from me. Man, that kid is fast--sonic fast, moving away from me as if I'm standing still. That's when I realized my believing that I'm still seventeen is just an illusion. My body was barely moving. My legs were pumping in slow motion. My mind was misfiring information to my body, registering pain rather than elation. My lungs were burning like the Hindenburg. I was moving like my Dad when he's high-stepping it in the kitchen. Only slower, if that was possible. I probably looked as if I was moving backward.
     I found myself down-shifting to a stumble and yelling at my grandson shrinking in the distance, "Hey! Hey! STOP!" Yeah, please stop, and, when he wouldn't, "I'm going to tell your father."
     Getting old stinks. It's right up there with Death and Taxes.
     Speaking of my grandson, that just wasn't his day. First, he had to live with the shame of embarrassing his loving grandfather in a race, and then he had to listen to his great-grandfather's semi-complaints that his alarm clock had gone off early that morning. I thought that was funny.

     "Are you scheduling your dates in the morning now?" I joked with him. He hasn't been on a date since the Japanese invited him to the Philippines to play with guns.
     Then he blamed his great-grandson, and I didn't find it quite so funny anymore, because his great-grandson is my grandson, the one who beat me in the race. He said that it must have been him because he's always in his room messing with his radio.

     What? My grandson never goes into his room. In the first place, he's not allowed to go into his great-grandfather's little in-law house in the front of our property. In the second place, my Dad's nuts. He never likes to admit he's done anything wrong. He sounds like me when I was still in single digits. He'd accuse me of something--something I obviously did--and I'd deny it. My motto as a kid was: "I wasn't there. I didn't do it. That's not me in the video."
     "Besides," I told my father, "he hasn't been here in three days...
     "I don't know how he did it, but he did it."
     "...and the day he was here, his mother brought him at 9pm, and he and I were out the door the next morning at 10.
     My wife--his daughter-in-law-- just looks at me and shakes her head. She loves my Dad to death, but even she could tell my Dad was stretching it. My father probably fiddled with it the night before for some reason and changed the setting himself.
     You know, I don't even know what my Dad even needs an alarm clock for. It's not like he has anything to do that early in the morning, but he insists on having one, so my wife makes sure he has one.
 
     My dog (We have two, and mine's the big one. My Dad owns the small, yappy one.) has been sick with diarrhea, so the poor guy has to stay outside At night he sleeps in the garage.
     My wife and I went to Costco and told my father several times, "Dad, the dog is sick. Don't let him inside."
     "What?"
     "The dog is sick. Don't let him in."
     "What are you talking about? My dog's not sick."
     "Not your dog, Dad. Mine."
     "See? I told you my dog wasn't sick."
     "And we're going out."
     "You're going where?"
     "Out," I tell him. If I said the magic word--abracaCostco!--my father would insist on going, and a quick trip would turn into hours of him wandering around wanting things. My grandson doesn't want so many things when we take him shopping with us, not even in the toy department. My father, on the other hand, likes to go up and down each aisle, picking up items that catch his attention, and putting them in my wife's cart. I follow him around, take those items out of the cart without him seeing me, and I put them back on their shelves.
     "He doesn't need that junk," I tell my wife, and laugh to myself. It reminds me of when I was a kid and wanted something like The Man From Uncle camera that turned into a gun.
     "You don't need that junk," he would tell me.
     My wife, on the other hand, will buy him anything he puts into her cart. She'll buy it for him, and he'll show his gratitude by not using it or eating it, depending on what "it" is. Anyway...
     "He's sick," I told him again.
     "Who?"
     "The dog. And we're going out. So don't let him in."
     "Don't let who in?"
     "My dog. Because he's sick."
     My Dad took a dramatic pause as he took that information in. He took it, considered it, chewed it around a little bit, and then said, "But my dog's not sick."
     Eventually, he understood, and, when we got home, who did we find inside? We found my dog, sleeping in the great room. Fortunately, there wasn't a mess for me to clean up, because my dog is a BIG dog, so the mess would have been a BIG mess.
     I, asking no one in particular because I knew the answer, said, "How did my dog get inside?"
     My father looked around.
     "Huh? Ah? Wha?" he said, pretending to be surprised. "He's inside? Who let him inside?"
     He looked at me and then at my wife and then back at me, his big eyes bulging with sincerity. My wife and I looked at each other. She lifted one eyebrow, I lifted the other.
     "You know," he tells me confidentially, and nods in the direction of my grandson whom we have just picked up, "I bet it was him."
 
 

Raising My Father

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