Steve is my maternal grandfather (otherwise known as Grandad). As Grammy (his wife) likes to say, "There are just some people you just can't train." Grandad is one of those people.
For years now he has been doing all kinds of absurd shit and it's an inside joke my family likes to call 'The Steve Chronicles'. Mom swears that she will one day compile a book of all these things and become a bestselling author. Some examples are below.
Minor accidents
Several years ago Grandad was diagnosed with colon cancer. He got treated and is now cancer-free but sometimes has some minor accidents. His retired job was as a mail delivery guy for NSA (his life job had been working for NSA). One day he accidentally sharted in his pants. Very visibly. After enduring a lot of ragging from his coworkers he drove home on his lunch break. Once home he changed his underwear and pants and then the idiot went back to work. My dumbass grandfather didn't have enough sense to just stay home and instead returned to the lion's den to get made fun of some more.
The second time this happened to him at work he went in to the bathroom and attempted to flush his underwear down the toilet. He came home and told Grammy that it took him 10 flushes to finally get them to go down and that the toilet had overflowed a little bit.
The Shed
Besides Grammy, Grandad's other two loves in life are The Weather Channel (every time he calls he asks me how much snow is on the ground) and his grass. I have never seen another person in my life so obsessed with making his lawn look good, but this generally keeps him out of Grammy's hair and out of trouble so we just leave him be most of the time. Because he's so nuts about the grass he cuts it frequently and thus obsesses over his riding lawnmower. A couple years ago he bought a small shed to store the tractor in. One day he was cutting the grass as per usual. Grammy was down at the bottom of their driveway weeding a flowerbed. She looks up right at the moment when Grandad--still on the tractor--comes bursting through the back end of his new shed, blowing out the back panels and driving straight through her other flower bed. He apparently had been attempting to park the tractor and forgot to step on the clutch. Grammy later told me that the look of shock on his face as he busted through the shed was one of the funniest things she has ever seen.
Diet, Caffeine Free Soda
Steve is diabetic. Steve also has a terrible case of undiagnosed ADD. Thus he is limited to only diet sodas and giving him caffeine just makes the rest of the family want to kill him. The problem with this is that very few (read: basically nowhere) [I'm 21 and I STILL can't spell restuaraunt, restaraunt, resturant, resteraunt, restorant, resturuant, resteruant, RESTAURANT for shit.] food service providers actually serve this kind of soda. But he never learns and a semblance of the following conversation happens at every place we go out to eat at:
Waitress: And what can I get you to drink tonight, sir?
Steve: What kind of sodas do you have?
Waitress: We have [lists out generic sodas]
Steve: Do you have anything that's diet, caffeine free?
Waitress: We have Diet [insert cola]....
Steve (if the answer is Diet Coke): Blech. I'd might as well be drinking toilet water. Can I have water with lemon?
Steve (if the answer is Diet Pepsi): Give me water with lemon. You know, you really should carry caffeine free diet pepsi products because I am a diabetic and caffeine will keep me up all night...(continues on this line of thought for another five minutes. I always feel a bit bad for people that have to wait on us.)
It's gotten to the point where the rest of the family just rolls our eyes because we know what's coming. One time we tried to prank him. While Steve was in the bathroom we started joking with our waiter. We were warning him about what to expect when Grandad got back from the bathroom and ordered his drink. Our waiter was a really cool guy and offered to go next door to the 7-Eleven and buy him a diet, caffeine free Sprite. Because we all can't wait to see Steve's face when he orders and the waiter hands him this DCF bottle, we give the guy money and he goes over to the 7-Eleven. About ten minutes later, Steve is back and ready to order his drink. To the surprise of the entire family, he orders water with lemon right off the bat, no mention whatsoever of DCF sodas. We are all astounded and flabbergasted that our ploy was foiled. Damn. The waiter instead asks, "You don't want a diet, caffeine free Sprite?" and pulls the bottle out from behind his back. Steve eyeballs the bottle, goes "Sure" and takes it from him. No surprised expressions, no exclamations, nothing. Didn't we all feel foolish.
Baby
Grandad finally retired for the second time this past December. Now he's home every day to drive the rest of us nuts. Several days a week Grammy babysits my youngest cousin Grace, who is two. Grace's favorite toy is a plush baby doll that we generally refer to as "Baby". Several weeks ago Grandad accidentally spilled some water on Baby. Instead of taking it downstairs to put it in the dryer for a few minutes, he decides to dry Baby off in the microwave. He didn't realize that Baby had a voicebox inside it. He found this out the hard way when after 30 second in Baby erupts into flames. Now Baby has a giant charred abyss in the middle of its body and smells like when a vacuum sucks up stuff it's not supposed to.
Now don't get me wrong, I love Grandad and if you ask him to do something for you, he'll do it, no questions asked. But sometimes he just lacks common sense. Once you know more about Kelly, you'll find that it might just be genetic.
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