Today we became our grandparents

Make sure you read the title of this entry. Is says, "Today we became our grandparents." It does NOT say, "Today we became grandparents." There is a heck of a lot of difference between those sentences and I just want anyone jumping to any conclusions.

No, today was a rather unsettling day as Barb and I realized we had become our grandparents.

There have been many comedians and TV shows over the years where they have lamented the fact that they had become their own parents. The situation usually revolves around the parent using words to their own children that their parents had used with them. Almost always the "kid" in the comedy is anout 13 and the parent is under 40.

This is not that situation at all. We skipped a whole generation and today we became our grandparents.

Previously we had made baby steps. We joined AARP and we gladly accepted senior citizens discounts whenever they were offered. I should have seen it coming when last week the young gal at the grocery store not only pushed my cart to the car and loaded the bags into the trunk, she also hurried around and opened and closed the driver's side door for me.

But that doesn't compare to today. Now that we have been in Nashville for awhile we decided it was time to get more involved. We looked up community education classes online and registered Barb for a class for those 55+ on making greeting cards. We expected her to walk into a room of young Baby Boomer retirees all ready to work one what is normally an extension of the trendy scrapbooking craze.

That wasn't the case. We walked into a room of very elderly people ... 40 years older than the two of us. It looked like a nursing home scene from a depressing ducumentary. Barb staggered as we walked down the handicapped ramp, going limp as she traveled the steps from young retiree to truly, truly aged. Her ashen face seemed to scream, "I am not ready for this."

Well, it turns out this was the Skip-bo tournament and not the card making class. After some some frantic attempts to escape the scene, Barb was escorted into a room where she realized that in a city of more than a half million people she was the ONLY one who had signed up 55+ greeting card making! The teacher was very gentle in reassuring Barb that she would be OK (like a child at a first day of indergarten), and I left her with the promise that I would indeed return for her. I don't think she believed me.

Once I got to the car I mopped my brow, cold sweat beads running down my face. My wife may have become her own grandmother, but I had escaped. And then I looked in the mirror. I had gotten new glasses a few weeks back, reassured by the optician that the look was "retro." I had laughing told people that I remembered my father wearing a pair just like them. But I was wrong. It was not my father who had a pair like them --- it was my grandfather! (Ste-grandfather, techincally). Even though we were not related by blood, with these new glasses on my face I had morphed into the round faced old man seen in the old family movies.

Fortunately, I knew how to break the spell. When I picked Barb up we immediately drove to Cheesecake Factory and ate - and we refused to ask for the senior citizen discount!! A good piece of cheesecake does wonders for the soul ... until you realiza how soft and easy to chew it is. Ahhhhhh.....