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My wife and I recently provided day care for our 6-year-old grandson for a week. It will probably take me a month to recover.
We had taken care of little boys before, obviously, although that was more than thirty years ago. We aren't as young as we were back then, but little boys are still as energetic as tornadoes.
My grandfathers were stoic, stately men who sat on the couch and drank black coffee and talked about crops and world events. They did not get on the floor with their grandkids and played with toys with them. But in their defense, they each had a score of grandchildren, so playing with toys on the floor would have been a fulltime job.
Times have changed. Grandchildren are seen as a precious resource, not just a byproduct of having kids. They're especially precious when they're your grandkids.
Once our grandson gets going on all cylinders in the morning, he's like a diesel engine: noisy, energetic, and nearly unstoppable.
One morning he asked me to accompany him out onto the lawn where he used his pitching wedge to demonstrate his golfing skills. His abilities already surpass mine.
Then we went into the basement where we sent toy race cars down a hilly track. Many of the cars had accidents, often with vivid, mouth-produced sound effects. The boy also provided some of the sound effects.
Then he decided that we should go camping. We needed a campfire, so he constructed a firepit from some foam rubber blocks. I found a YouTube video of a campfire on my phone, and we were soon enjoying the comfort of a crackling, popping fire.
We pretended to roast wieners and marshmallows over the pretend fire and quickly and messily devoured them. Then it was time to retire for the night.
He had a couple of small tents available. He put a blanket on the floor of the largest tent and assigned it to me. The basement's concrete floor was awfully hard, and the only way I could fit into the tent was if I sat cross-legged. I hadn't done that for forty years.
I had barely settled in when I heard the morning crow of a rooster. I had to explain to the lad that Grandpa's joints didn't work like they used to and that we might need a hoist to get him off the floor.
The boy declared that he was starving and suggested that we catch some fish for breakfast. We each found a toy to use as a pretend fishing rod and walked over to a carpet that, I was informed, was actually a pristine alpine lake. We each made a cast and instantly caught fat lake trout, which we roasted over the YouTube campfire. We were so famished that we didn't bother to clean the fish.
I was then asked if I wanted to be a superhero.
Who can turn down an offer like that?
I assumed that going into the superhero business would involve requisitioning towels or pillowcases, but I was woefully behind the times. The boy had a selection of commercially manufactured superhero capes that fasten at the neck with Velcro tabs.
We were running around the basement, conducting random acts of super heroism, when the boy suddenly pointed at a far wall and exclaimed, "Look! A villain!"
He ran over to a piece of exercise equipment and gave it a stern lecture that began with, "This is your captain speaking!" and ended with "And don't ever do that again!"
The outdoors was beckoning, so we repaired to the backyard and played catch with a foam rubber football that has a finned tail. He soon invented a game called "Look out for your head!" in which participants fling the finned football skyward and shout to the opposite player, "Look out for your head!" The foam rubber toy was incapable of causing harm, but it was fun to dodge the falling missile.
Of all the toys we played with, the one that gave him the most enjoyment was also the cheapest.
I constructed a pair of paper airplanes, and we were soon holding distance contests, setting altitude records, and trying to see if a tossed airplane could go through the basketball hoop (it can). The planes were so much fun that he said we needed to write our names on them so nobody could steal them.
And that was just the first day! By the end of the week, I was aching in places that I didn't even know I had.
Being a grandpa is hard work. Somebody should create a preparatory training regimen called "The Grandchild's Yoga-based Aerobics, Contortion Workout and One-Legged Hopping" program.
-- Jerry's book, "Dear County Agent Guy," can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.