Jim, the younger of my two brothers, has told me a story the last two times we have seen each other. The tale arose out of Jim and his wife admiring my grandchildren, and then remembering how much our dad loved his grandchildren—my sons.
Daddy had a lake cottage near the back entrance to Walt Disney World, where he would spend his weekends fishing and puttering around. One Saturday he took my older son, Scott, then probably around four years old, out to the lake with him. Daddy had a sweet tooth (as, according to my memory, did Scott). Daddy had stored some small Snickers bars in the freezer for a little treat when his sweet tooth overtook him.
As the story goes, my older brother, Jerry, was out at the lake with Daddy and Scott. Daddy and Jerry were outside, probably tinkering with a boat or a car, when Scott decided he was going to get a Snickers bar, and nothing was going to get in his way. He stealthily locked the front door and then the kitchen door, then dragged a chair up to the freezer and got his coveted Snickers bars.
Daddy and Jerry came back to the house and tried to open the kitchen door, only to find it locked. Then they went to the front door—again, locked. They started knocking on the door and calling Scott, who knew he was in big trouble. Open the door to be punished? No way.
I don't know how long they knocked and what they had to say to finally get Scott to open the door—that detail has faded over time. But Jim said he had never known Daddy to be so angry at his beloved grandson.
Daddy got over his anger; love will out. I never heard the story until 30 years had passed. And Daddy adored both his grandsons to his last breath in 1984, when they were eleven and nine.
Do you ever wonder how much of your history you've never heard?
1 comment:
This memory is so faint that it may just be your story putting it there. But my favorite expression regarding my "sweet tooth" is as follows:
Some people have a sweet tooth; I have seventeen.
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