Grandparent Day

Yesterday I went to my granddaughter Hannah Yoder’s elementary school for grandparent day. The visit lasted about half an hour. It was half an hour of sitting on a tiny tikes chair and reading with her. I had a great time and the chairs were much roomier than the ones in the lunch room from a different school function. It was a time of interaction with my granddaughter and a few of her other classmates.

While I was waiting for this momentous occasion, I was talking with some other grandparents and waiting in the lobby out of the wind and cold. One man was nearly as conservative as I am. We connected on several things, one of which was being privileged to live in the United States and another was the lack of respect for life and for the respect of others today.

Several of the other grandparents, I was privileged to work with at Mt. Pleasant Frick Hospital and it was great seeing them again.

I even bumped into one of my high school classmates. She mentioned a story I’d completely forgotten and still don’t remember, so I’ll have to share her recollection of the incident. One night, she brought one of her children to the hospital because of an illness. While they were there, a rowdy, obnoxious man who’d obviously been consuming alcohol was brought in on a wheelchair. He continued to be disruptive to the other people in the emergency room waiting to be treated.

I don’t remember this, but she said, “You went behind the desk and came out holding a fly swatter and waved at him and saying, ‘If you don’t settle down right now, I’m going to use this on you.’ You waved the swatter in front of his face. He settled down quickly.”

Let me say that this was not my usual bedside manner, but it worked.