As you probably know from reading this blog, we don't post everyone's stories every single week. That would be too much work for the transcribers, especially when we ask them to transcribe both audio and handwritten stories. Also, posting everyone's stories every single week would be asking a lot of our blog readers, especially on days where we have fifteen or twenty people in a session. We try to give our transcriber a few stories to transcribe at a time. Sometimes, it can lead to our stories being transcribed out of order.
I'm pleased to say, after all this time, we are posting both parts of older bud Diane's "Hurry Up GranPaw" series:
Diane Richardson
11.16.2021
Hurry Up GranPaw
My granddaughter Jourdyn, my son’s daughter, comes over twice a month for the weekend. She lives in Cherry Hill. Though she is not my husband’s biological grandchild, he loves her like she is. Her mother would bring her over to bond with us since she was born. At this time I’m writing about she was five years old. When my husband Joe gets up on Saturday mornings to run his errands so does she. He goes to the upstairs bathroom to get ready, and she goes to the downstairs bathroom to get ready. She comes up to get dressed and knocks on his bathroom door and says, “Hurry up GranPaw” and he hurries.
She stands there waiting for him to come out. He goes into the room to get dressed and she stands outside the room and says “Hurry up GranPaw.” Like they have a time to be somewhere and don’t want to be late. As always when she says hurry up, he hurries. She then follows him to his car and gets in the back with her intentions of going with him wherever he’s going.
Since returning Joe has a hobby of making wine. He makes all types of wine and there are very good. I gave him a wine making kit one year for X-mas and it took off. He gets a lot of requests for it. His buddy’s daughter was getting married and requested fifty bottles of assorted wines to put on the tables at the reception. Joe even makes the labels to put on the wine bottles to say what kind of wine it is and anything else you wanted printed on it.
So this Saturday morning he was going to the wine supply stored in South Philly to get his wine supplies. When Jourdyn went to school Monday the teacher asked what they did over the weekend. When she asked Jourdyn she said, “Me and my GranPaw went to the liquor store.”Diane Richardson
11.30.2021
Hurry Up Grandpa—Story Two
Y’all remember my story last time about Jourdyn’s adventures with her grandpaw? So this Saturday morning she’s knocking on grandpa’s door saying, “Hurry up grandpaw, hurry,” as always while she waits patiently outside the door for him to come out. And she follows him to his car, gets in the backseat, buckles up like she was invited. So as Joe was driving preparing for a turn, he turned on his turn signal. Jourdyn asked, “What’s that clicking sound grandpaw?”
He answered, “To let the drivers behind me know that I’m going to make a turn. There’s a signal for a right turn and a signal for a left turn.”
“But Grandpa how is it their business where you’re going?”
He answered, “So they can drive accordingly.”
“Well, ok, and I’m not saying I’m smarter than you or anything grandpa, but I don’t think they can hear those clicking sounds all the way back there.”
And if you liked Diane's two part story, then keep an eye on our blog for the next few weeks ;)
If you want to transcribe for Best Day, then email us at info@bestdayofmylifesofar.org. You can also share our older buds' adventures by donating to Best Day, subscribing to our newsletter, sending a note to our older buds, or following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And if you or the older buds have multi-part stories, then you or they can submit stories through our portal right here. We're especially interested to stories from Black older buds, but we're always looking for stories from older buds of color, older buds with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ older buds, older buds of any gender or sex, older buds of any religion, and older buds who just plain break the mold.
And don't forget to maintain contact with the older buds in your life. If you can't be there in person, please call them, email them, or message them on social media. And if they're using teleconferencing or remote events for the first time, give them a call and help them set things up. Check in on them to see how well they're getting used to these programs. Buy them a computer or an internet package if they don't have one of their own. It's a human right, after all.
Curated by Caitlin Cieri