Grandpa tales

I opened Blogger tonight intending to make a post, and then just wound up staring at the screen blankly for a few minutes. I wanted to write something, but I had nothing to write. Undaunted, I decided to write something anyway. So here is a story about my grandpa. I used to spend a lot of time over at my maternal grandparents' house when I was little. When my parents took a trip to Las Vegas when I was in kindergarten, my older sisters stayed at home but I stayed with Nana and Grandpa. One afternoon Grandpa and I were down the basement in his workshop - a place I loved dearly. I had grabbed a pencil and sheet of neatly cut paper from the supply at the table, because I wanted to draw my parents a welcome home cartoon. I decided that the cartoon would depict a mother yelling at her son because his dog had pooped on the living room carpet. I'm not quite sure why this was supposed to welcome my parents home from Vegas, but anyway. I drew the picture, and it came time for the cartoon speech bubbles. For this I needed Grandpa's assistance. I wanted no spelling errors. "Grandpa?" I asked. "How do you spell 'poop'?"

Grandpa didn't miss a beat. "S-H-I-T," he replied. Not being completely naive, I started giggling. Grandpa started laughing too. I think the cartoon ended up saying something like "The damn dog's shit on the carpet again!" and my mom thought it was hilarious. This tale from my formative years probably explains a lot, actually.