I’m always looking for ways to annoy my grandkids. Life wouldn’t be so fun if I couldn’t.
So while we are on a family vacation (15 of us in the same house), I have stopped calling them by their names. Instead, I have dubbed them with numbers.
There are eight of them — from 18 years old to 9 in age — and so they are No. 1 through No. 8.
For example:
— “No. 4, pick up your wet socks before their fumes put me in a coma.”
— “Ok, No. 7, I can tell by your chocolate milk mustache that you’re the one that left your glass and dish on the counter. Now, get them over to the sink.”
You get the idea. At first they protested. They didn’t like being known as a numeral, except maybe Maddy who got to be No. 1.
“Hey, I could have given you Seven Dwarf names with one of you girls being Snow White to make it eight,” I told them.
Actually, that might not have been a bad idea. We have a Happy, a Bashful and an occasional Grumpy. And a lot of them could qualify for Sleepy. A Dopey? I wouldn’t give that moniker to any of them even though I sometimes think a few of them might deserve it after some of their shenanigans.
I decided not to mention to them that there is a movie called “The Hateful Eight.”
But something strange happened after a while. The grandkids started liking their numerical nicknames, even calling each other by them at times.
Spoiled my fun. I decided to go back to their regular names. But I’m thinking about some other way I can annoy them.
Wet willies probably would get me in trouble with their parents, though.
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I snuck away for lunch yesterday for one of my guilty pleasures — a McDonald’s quarter pounder with cheese. Burp!
But I had to order on a self-serve kiosk screen instead of sauntering up to the counter. It sort of overwhelmed me, even though i gave it the old college try.
I had my order almost finished but then hit a wall, not getting it finished. An employee happened to be in sight and so I asked him for help.
“You’re about there,” he said. “You just need to do this … this … and this.”
Three big teen-agers were watching and when the biggest one stood up to get his order, I asked, “Guard or tackle?”
He looked at me, a little taken aback, and replied, “Tackle.”
“Thought so,” I said.
The next kid passed by for his Big Mac meal and I said, “Linebacker?”
“I’m a running back now but I did play outside linebacker last season.”
And then it was the turn of the most slightly-built of the three to come under my scrutiny. “Wide receiver,” I stated.
“Yep.”
The employee who had helped me at the kiosk had watched all this. “How can you just look at some kids and know what positions they play in football but you couldn’t figure out how to order your meal?”
“Pure talent, I guess,” I replied.
———-
I didn’t want a basket on my rented bike like my wife’s. “Why not?” she said. “You can put a water bottle, your phone and a towel in it when we’re over on the beach.”
“I don’t want to look like Miss Gulch (alias the Wicked Witch of the West) when I ride,” I said.
The next day, I was pedaling on the beach with my phone stuffed in one pocket of my gym shorts and my water bottle in the other. When I tried to check my temperature on my phone, I couldn’t pull it out without a struggle.
When I eventually did work it out of my pocket, it dropped out onto the beach. Jeez!
But that wasn’t the worst part. With all the yanking I did to free my phone from my pocket’s innards, I had accidentally called a half dozen people — two of them twice — along with two telemarketers.
The telemarketers didn’t get back to me, but a couple of friends left messages about returning my call. I had to explain to them my version of a butt dial.
So I stole a basket off one of my grandkids’ bikes. Now if I can just keep from shouting at fellow beach goers, “I’ll get you, my pretty … and your little dog, too!”
I’m thinking the beach patrol might try to run me off with one of their red trucks.