Being a good grandparent sometimes means breaking records

I spent this past weekend in Detroit visiting my grandkids. 

There are four of them these days; three boys and a girl, ranging in age from six months to 14 years, proving that my daughter is either a sex fiend or a glutton for punishment. Since we're talking about my sweet, innocent baby here, I'm going to assume the latter.

All my grandkids are raging balls of excess personality, from the soft-spoken, rock-music-playing eldest, Edison, all the way down to Ari, who's about a week from learning to crawl. In-between are the reclusive, 12-going-on-52 Rosie, and four-year-old Kaelyn, who seems to have me confused with some sort of unbreakable playground equipment.

I love them all, but a weekend in their collective company is all the reminder I need of why people have children when they are young. Those of us that remember The Beatles' Ed Sullivan Show debut just aren't up to it.

By the time Saturday night rolled around, all I wanted to do was fall into bed and sleep until half-past June. I felt ... old, which really isn't all that bad.

But it got me thinking of the summer I spent at my Great Gramma Kelly's house in Indiana. I was 14; she was 40 years older than Yoda and twice as wrinkly, yet somehow, she never seemed to get tired of dealing with my four siblings and me. 

Great Gramma Kelly was Indiana-farm-girl-I-remember-the-Depression-and-both-World-Wars tough, and that is tough indeed, my friend. But she also was patient. Except for once. Once that I remember very well.

I was alone at the house for some reason, just me and Gramma K. A week earlier, I had purchased a new record, a 45 (Google it, junior). The name of the song was "All American Girl" (don't bother Googling that, you'll only get the recent Kelly Clarkson release) and it was — I now realize — terrible. The lead singer sounded like a rabid wolverine tangled up in barbed wire.

At the time, however, I thought it was great. So much so that I played the record over and over while great gramma quietly went about her daily routine of cleaning house, preparing dinner, taking her afternoon nap.

I started playing the record at noon and was still going strong by 4 in the afternoon. It was at this point that double-gramma came into the living room and asked how much the record had cost me.

"Sixty-nine cents," I told her.

Great Gramma Kelly unfolded a dollar from her clutch purse, handed it to me. Without a word, she removed my 45 from the turntable and smashed it to pieces against the side of the record player. She returned to the kitchen where a bowl of sweet peas waited to be snapped.

Being a grandparent, I began to realize then and fully understand now, is not always easy.

Catch Mike Taylor's Reality Check radio show every weekday at 5:30 p.m. on WGLM, 106.3, Greenville.