The Grandpa Rules

Like all people I adore my Grandfather. He passed over 15 years ago but I often think of him and regret that my daughter will never meet him. His name was Mark Majors but to all his friends he was just Maj. He was fascinating to me as a young boy for many reasons. First off he had a flat top haircut that felt ever so cool to run your hands over (its ok he didn't mind it). Another really cool thing is that he was a bridge inspector for Conrail, so he got to drive a railroad truck. There are not many cooler things than a big yellow railroad truck to a 5 year old. He also lost an eye as a young man due to a hammer splintering and pieces getting in to his eye... ok that part is not cool but the glass eye he had was really neat to a young lad, plus when he got a new eye he gave me the old one. So as you can see my grandpa Mark was a very cool cat indeed. He was a huge Cardinals fan (hey everyone has one bad trait) and lived and died IU basketball and Bobby Knight. But the greatest thing about Grandpa was he had these awesome but very strange rules that he felt everyone should live by.

Some examples-

You must eat the specialty of the restaurant you are dining at, so if you go to a fish joint and order chicken... you were in for a talking to. Oh you don't like fish? To damn bad you are at a fish place so order fish.

Ketchup is for hamburgers, mustard is for hot dogs they are not to be mixed and mustard does not go on a hamburger nor does ketchup belong on a hot dog.

But not all his rules had to do with food. Some other examples...

Never make a left turn at a T intersection.

Always put a sock and shoe on one foot first then move on to the second foot. I have not idea the reasoning behind this rule.

If you were lounging you have to either be in bare feet or shoes... Never, under any circumstances should you walk around in stocking feet. This one was a big one. I ran a foul of this rule quite a bit as a kid.

Were some of these rules nuts? Yes, of course they were but talking about them brings a smile to my face. They were part of what made my Grandpa so fun to grow up with.

In the words of John, Paul, George and Ringo "Will you still need me, will you still feed me,When I'm sixty-four,"

Reavo