PAR FOR THE COURSE

No, neither Grandpère nor I are golfers. The title is a metaphor for our lives. If Grandpère would submit to an evaluation, I'm fairly sure he would be diagnosed with ADHD. My friend Cathy thinks I have ADD, and I tend to agree with her. The diagnosis would explain a lot about my life. An instance: My grandmother, who was an excellent pianist, tried to teach me to play the piano, but as soon as I moved on to playing with two hands, I was blocked. I could not concentrate and coordinate playing different keys and rhythms with two hands. My grandmother and I tried and tried, because I wanted to play the piano, but I could not do it. End of piano lessons. It's quite difficult for me to focus on more than one thing at a time. You know the saying about walking and chewing gum? I'm not quite that bad, but you get the idea.

Today was Grandparents Day at my grandson's school, or so Grandpère and I thought. However, neither of us paid close attention to the letter from the school, which advised that only grandparents whose names started with 'M' to the end of the alphabet were to be at the school today. The 'B's were next Friday. Of course, Grandson was not in church for the mass where we were to meet him, because we were there on the wrong day. Someone went to get GS out of his classroom, and the authorities were going to permit him to stay with us, because other grannys and grandpas had come on the wrong day, too, and all was to be cool.

Grandson didn't fall far from his grandpa's and grandma's tree, as he has ADHD, too. GS glides more smoothly through life when routines are followed, and GP and I were out of sync with the school's routine, so he really did not want to be with us today. Plus I believe we may have embarrassed him by showing up on the wrong day. He's 11, in the 5th grade. We decided we'd let him off the hook and walked him back to his classroom. However, his teacher urged him back out to the mass with us, but when we were outside, GS began to tear up. I said, 'You really, really don't want us to be here today, do you?'

He said, 'No, I want you next Friday, but now my teacher probably won't let me back in the classroom.'

I said, 'Come with us, and we'll explain to your teacher, and maybe she'll let you stay.' And she did, so we'll return next Friday. Oh dear! We will have to do better!

We'd planned to go to the computer store after the Grandparents Day activities, so on we went a bit earlier to buy a new computer before our old machine not only crashes frequently, but dies forever. We accomplished the task, and the store will be transferring my material to the new computer. For now, I'm functioning on my laptop without all my stuff, documents, pictures, music, all of which were difficult to use on the old computer anyway, because if I had more than 3 tabs open, I was asking for a crash.

Our son, Grandson's dad, joined us for lunch, and when we told him the story, he said, 'Oh no! With him, the routines must be followed.'

There you have it - the story of half our day.