Grandpa Duty in the Hokey Pokey Ward

I am sitting in the parents’ lounge of a local dance studio. A two-year-old boy is staring at me. Mucous streams from both his nostrils like lava flows. His left eye bears a football-sized sleepy grub and he is drooling. Naturally. His right hand, glistening with snot, clings to my knee. He brandishes a toy block in his other hand. He wants me to play.

I will have none of it, though. Somewhere on this kid there is a germ with my name on it.

“Milo, come here!” a woman I assume to be the kid’s mother says. “Milo, leave that man alone. Milo!”

His name must be Milo. “Well, Milo,” I think, “Your tiny-cute-snot-drippy act might work with most people, but not with me. You’re looking at a guy who has changed two generations of poopy diapers and I don’t charm easily.”

I’m a little on edge because Milo is not my only problem. There are ten more would-be Milo’s in the parents’ lounge, younger siblings of the four-year-old girls wiggling to the Hokey Pokey in the studio next door. My granddaughter, Veronica, is one of the dancers. My older daughter, Kate, is sick and asked me to deliver Veronica to her dance lesson. I said, “Yes,” without thinking out my options. I said, “Yes,” without realizing I would have to remain a full-hour in the germ warfare lab called the parents’ lounge.

So, even if Milo’s germs don’t get me, I know my chances of survival are not good. One of these Lilliputian bug hosts is going to infect me. I just know it.

And this is also what I know: Being a grandparent is kinda like being a parent. Most of what you do is never going to be appreciated. You’re never going to get proper credit for what you do yet, somehow, you just can’t imagine doing anything else.