Tag: Grandpa Stories

I know that you think that Grumppa is old, but that’s a good thing. It’s good for you to see the different generations in your life through yours, your parents, and your grandparents. The oldest of you even had the wonderful privilege of knowing your great, great, Grandma Hall for a short period.

As for me, I kind of grew out of birthdays. My brothers and sister had moved away and my birthday was just one in five that occurred in a little over a month:

• Uncle Steve – May 18
• Uncle Tom – June 4th
• Me – June 12th
• Uncle Jim – June 27th
• Aunt Sue – July 8th

But that’s a story for another time. I just never saw my birthday as that big of a deal.

Not that I don’t celebrate them; I just went to a big family birthday party for Uncle Tom who turned 80 last week. If I reach that milestone, I may just celebrate too. Whether it’s who I am or just the nature of memory, my two most remembered birthdays are not of the happy kind.

The first occurred in 2009. I had been told that my job would end on….. you guessed it… my birthday. Not that there wasn’t celebration; there was, it just wasn’t for me. The organization was celebrating an achievement milestone and I was shown the door in a hurry so they could get back to celebrating.

The second was in 2016 when my sister passed away. I’m not good at remembering dates that I don’t want to think about, so knowing our bond, I have a sneaky suspicion that my sister chose that day intentionally—a final, permanent way to make sure her little brother never forgot her. There was celebration that day, but it was for her leaving a world of pain and suffering (she had cancer) and going on to a much better place.

Have I created any traditions? Sort of. Every year I look at my Facebook page and see all the people who wished me a happy birthday. I try to come up with my one annual Grumppa Facebook post where I talk about another year passing and what it means. This year, I just may point everyone to this post.

Imagine being run over by a truck that looked something like this when you were six years old. That’s the story I’m going to tell you.

I didn’t get to learn all of life’s lessons in Kindergarten because I didn’t go to Kindergarten. I started with First Grade. According to Google Maps, it was one mile from my house to the school house at the bottom of the hill. I’ll save the story about walking to school for a different post. Sometimes my Dad (your great-grummpa) would take me to school on his way to work in a truck similar to the picture above.

This particular day, I got out of the truck and proceeded to walk around to the front of the truck to cross the street over to the school. My father had thought that I had walked around the back. As you can tell by the picture, this old truck had a pretty high hood and I was shorter than the hood of the truck. Dad couldn’t see me.

As I was walking in front of the truck, Dad started to take off and I felt the truck bump up against me and start pushing on me. I knew what was happening and I had the oddest thought at that moment. I was going to be Superman and push back against and stop that truck. Physics being what it is and Superman being a comic book hero, I lost that battle. Dad drove the truck over me (luckily the truck also had a high clearance and I wasn’t in front of the tires) and continued on to work, not even noticing me lying on the road.

After shaking off the shock, I got up and tried to figure out what to do. I knew that the family of a girl I went to school with lived right next door to the school (which wasn’t open yet), so I went to their door and knocked. I told the mother of the house what had happened and asked if she would call my mom. She asked me if I was alright and I told her that I just had a bump on my right knee. When I pulled up my pants leg to show her, I was greeted with a bunch of blood on what looked like tissue paper.

My mother came to pick me up and take me to the emergency room, but on the way she stopped by where my Dad worked and let him know what had happened (remember, no cell phones). I had to stay in the car so I have no idea what was said; since I was the fifth of six children, maybe they’d been through something like this before; I’ll never know.

At the hospital, I found out I was lucky that whatever grabbed me did not hit and pull my kneecap. They did have to put 9 stitches in my leg though. The scar has gradually faded away over the years, but I can still see a tiny bit of it if you want me to show you.

I’m not really sure that there is any moral to this story, but then again sometimes stories are just that, stories.