Taught By My Example - @Studio30Plus Writing Prompt

"Having grandkids is great" I thought. "You get to teach them stuff and play with them, not to mention spoil them with gifts and candy and such, and when they start to get tired or a little out of control you get to give them back."

So I starting thinking and planning what I'd do with my grandkids the next time they visited. They're my daughter's kids. And I love to spoil them while making things difficult for her and her husband - in a fun way of course. They'd tell their parents "But Grampa said... " I look upon it sort of as karma. My daughter's not so sure.

"Let's see" I said to myself "we've already loaded them up on chocolate and revved them up on sweets before they had to go home."

"And" I laughed "there was the Christmas I gave my eldest grandson a drum." That didn't last very long for some reason. Somehow playing it in the early hours of the morning didn't go over very well with his parents.

"Let's see, the eldest is seven and the twins are four. I think they're old enough" I said to my wife. "It's time they learned a long-standing family tradition handed down to me from my father and from me to my children." "Are you sure?" queried my wife. "You're daughter will kill you." "Maybe" I said but the kids will love it. And besides the tradition must live on."

And so my daughter her husband and the kids visited. We sat down to dinner. BBQ'd burgers and hot dogs - their favourite. And for desert? JELL-O!

"Hey guys, watch this" I enthused. And as I squished the JELL-O between my teeth turning it to liquid they stared at me wide-eyed with their mouths agape as I gargled my dessert. Oh, there were hoots and hollers over Grampa's antics and soon there was JELL-O everywhere; running down kids faces, dribbling from their mouths and down the front of their shirts. Over the gargling JELL-O and gales of laughter my daughter looked at me with eyes that could kill, knowing full well this was an antic that would now be repeated when she got them home.

"Thanks, Dad, I..." and she broke down and started laughing as she looked at me with JELL-O streaming out of my left nostril.

"Hey" I gargled proudly "I can honestly say they've been taught by my example."

And she replied "Yeah - some example!"

The Polka Dot Door

A long time ago, when I was 22, my first child was born. That kid grew up on a little Canadian kid's show called Polka Dot Door, produced by the TV Ontario network. And Dad, more often than not, sat through those shows with his little one. Nine or so years later when a brother, and a year after that when a sister came along number one son was moving on to Knight Rider and The Dukes of Hazzard. But there was a nice overlap where his siblings picked up where he had left off with Polka Dot Door. And Dad was right there to welcome them. So you're looking at a Polka Dot Door veteran. The show began in 1971 and ran to 1993. I didn't watch the full run but I did get in my fair share. The formula was pretty simple. A young male and female host, which seemed to change every week, sang songs, told stories, made crafts and generally did their best stimulate little brains. The show opened as follows... Imagination Day! Oh boy! ...

Hello Goodbye

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There's a debate underway in my household between my wife and I. I say "underway" because it hasn't quite reached the "raging" stage. If you want raging, my wife (a Francophone) and I (an Anglophone) from time to time (usually in a weak moment of my own making) slip into our number one discussion around why we don't speak more French at home - ergo - when am I, a former public servant who learned French at the expense of our gracious taxpayers and was technically rated bilingual (even though I hardly used it), going to improve my use of Canada's other language? This one never gets resolved, hence it's ongoing nature. But the current debate is over a remark I casually made the other day. I'm no geek, but with a lot of time on my hands I surf the web, converse on Facebook and such and - I have to admit - "I'm nonamedufus and I'm a Twitterholic". In an epiphany-like moment I was struck by the apparent impact of social networkin...

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