"Coach Poppie's Grandparent Tips"

By Jerry Zezima

Ever since I became a grandfather, and have proudly remained the most immature member of the family, I have often been asked if I spoil my grandchildren.

“No,” I always reply. “That’s my wife’s job. My job is to corrupt them.”

This makes me supremely qualified to be a grandparent coach.

I got the idea for this heretofore nonexistent job after reading an item in the Old Farmer’s Almanac about empty-nest coaches, who are “giving advice to parents whose offspring have left for college.”

As the father of two daughters who flew the coop long ago and are now the mothers of my five grandkids, I have these important pieces of advice for abandoned parents:

(a) Rest assured that the kids will return home periodically to mooch meals, do laundry, use your car and ask for money.

(b) Even after they move out for good, the nest will never be empty because a lot of their stuff will still be in your house.

Now, as the grandfather of three girls and two boys ranging in age from 11 to 5, all of whom consider me their favorite toy, I have these important pieces of advice for fellow grandparents who could use a little coaching:

(a) Never turn down an opportunity to see your grandchildren, especially when you can do fun things with them like going to the zoo, baking cupcakes, riding on a carousel, going out for ice cream, blowing bubbles, playing hide-and-seek, splashing in kiddie pools, attending dance recitals, painting pictures, pushing them on swings, jumping on trampolines, giving horsey-back rides and so much more.

(b) Get rid of your adult children’s stuff and make room for toys, games, books, clothes, musical instruments, watercolors, paintbrushes, colored pencils, drawing paper, artwork, homemade birthday cards, candy dishes, plastic chairs, small tables, little step stools, rubber duckies, Wiffle balls, flip-flops, dollhouses, costume jewelry and other priceless things that can be hazardous if you trip over them but will make your grandkids feel right at home.

A grandparent bonus: Starting at age 5, your grandchildren can be your technical support system. This comes in handy if you don’t know how to find their favorite cartoons on your own television or where to download a sports app on your smartphone, which obviously has a dumb owner.

Another great thing about being a grandparent is hearing your children say the same things to their kids that you used to say to them.

“Eat your vegetables or you don’t get any dessert!”

“Brush your teeth and go to bed!”

“For crying out loud, get off the phone!”

“Pick up your toys! What do you think this is, a pigsty?”

You can then smile knowingly and say, “Don’t be so hard on them.”

This will put you in your grandchildren’s good graces forever.

It will also make the young ones happy to be seen with you. I’m sure you remember when your kids were in school and didn’t want their friends to know you even existed.

When you are a grandparent, however, you can flaunt the undeniable fact that your grandkids love your company.

This is especially true if you spoil them, as my wife does, by giving them candy or lollipops when their parents don’t want you to.

Or you can take it a step further by corrupting them, as I do, which entails telling silly jokes, doing Three Stooges imitations or singing like a chicken.

But the most important things you can do as a grandparent is to show your grandchildren how much you love them and to acknowledge that your children are good parents. My wife, Sue, and I, known to our grandkids as Nini and Poppie, are proud to say that our daughters are wonderful mothers. And their husbands are terrific fathers.

That’s why we have the best grandchildren on earth. Sorry, fellow grandparents, but it’s just a fact.

So take the advice of Coach Poppie and you’ll be a winner with the kiddies. You might even achieve the ultimate goal of being your grandchildren’s favorite toy.

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima

"Look Who's Walking"

By Jerry Zezima

My heart surgeon told me to take a hike, so I bought a pedometer. Then he told me that my surgery was canceled and I didn’t have to take a hike. But I already had the pedometer.

So I took a hike.

It was a walk in the park — or, actually, around the neighborhood — compared to the excessive ambulation I would have to do each day while recovering from the surgery I never had.

But since most of my walking is done in the middle of the night (to and from the porcelain convenience), and it’s a good form of exercise that isn’t so stressful that I would need heart surgery, I decided to get outside on a sunny morning and take my pedometer in stride.

According to the diminutive digital device, for which I spent the whopping sum of $9.49, sparing no expense for my health, I took only 47 steps before I was almost run over by someone backing out of a driveway (in a car, not on foot).

It was an inauspicious start to the first leg of my journey. (The second leg followed or I would have fallen down.)

Around the corner, I encountered two people, a young man and a young woman, walking their dogs, each a young husky, on the other side of the street.

“Good morning!” I chirped.

No reaction from the humans.

“Woof!” I barked.

The pooches reacted excitedly.

“Woof!” each one replied, almost yanking their two-legged companions off their feet and dragging them, face-first, across the road.

I wasn’t sure if the dogs wanted to kiss me or bite me, which in either case would have required them to get shots, so I picked up the pace, wondering as the foursome lurched away if the dogs were taking the humans for a walk.

While trudging up a small hill, my bad breath coming in short bursts, I checked my pedometer and saw that I had taken a thousand steps.

I also saw Arnie the mailman.

“I thought you were in the hospital,” he said from his truck.

“I may end up there after this,” I replied, explaining that, contrary to what I had told him a couple of weeks before, I didn’t need heart surgery after all.

“That’s amazing,” Arnie said. “By the way, I put some bills in your mailbox. I hope they don’t affect your heart.”

“Do you see a lot of walkers?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “Everyone is health-conscious these days. But there are a lot of people on bikes, too. One guy, Bob, rides around the neighborhood. He always whizzes past my truck. I can see him coming in my side mirror. I’ll yell, ‘Bob, what are you doing? Be careful!’ One day he ran into the back of a bus.”

“Was he hurt?” I wondered.

“No,” Arnie said. “And he’s still riding. Maybe he should walk.”

“If I get too tired, will you drive me home in your truck?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said with a smile. “You don’t know how many walkers ask me that.”

Up the street, I stopped to chat with Lillian, 86, who was using a walker to get the mail Arnie had left for her. I told her about my canceled cardiac surgery.

“You’re lucky,” she said. “I have a heart problem. In fact, I have to go to the doctor this afternoon. It’s my social life now.”

“Do you walk?” I asked.

“Only around the driveway,” Lillian said. “A pedometer wouldn’t do me much good.”

But it worked pretty well for me. After walking past a house where the sprinklers had just come on, I arrived home, damp and winded, with my heart beating fast in anticipation of seeing how many steps I had taken.

The count on my pedometer: 3,552. It amounted to about a mile and a half.

“How do you feel?” my wife asked.

“Not  bad,” I said. “But if I can’t make it back tomorrow, check the mailbox. Arnie’s going to make me a special delivery.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima

"A Pain in the Grass"

By Jerry Zezima

According to an old saying, which can probably be attributed to my neighbors, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

But now that my neighbors have installed a new fence, and a landscaper has worked turf magic on my once-barren property, I can happily say that the grass is green on my side, too.

For the past several years, I had lived in the Death Valley of the neighborhood. The front and back yards looked like they had been manicured with a flamethrower. The place was so desolate that I was afraid of attracting rattlesnakes and vultures.

When my wife, Sue, and I bought our house in 1998, the property was luxuriant, like a fairway at the Masters Golf Tournament or the top of Brad Pitt’s head.

Then I became the chief groundskeeper. Using an asthmatic power mower, I had to cut what was becoming the grassy version of a receding hairline.

Not only did I do a spotty job, but I left clippings all over the yard. Even worse, I didn’t trim the edges of the property to Sue’s satisfaction.

So she fired me.

“But I was working for free,” I said incredulously.

“It wasn’t even worth that,” she responded.

Our next move was to hire a landscaping company that since then has cut the grass, picked up all the clippings and trimmed meticulously. They’ve also done the spring and fall cleanups.

It’s been well worth the money.

We also hired a lawn service, ostensibly to enrich the grass by dropping seed, spreading fertilizer, applying weed killer, sprinkling lime and, once a year, aerating the entire property.

It was not worth the money.

As the yard began to develop more bare patches than the Bonneville Salt Flats, I asked various representatives of the lawn service what I could do to improve the situation.

“Do you water regularly?” one of them asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “And that’s not counting the times I get up in the middle of the night.”

He said I should run the in-ground sprinklers for a short time every morning. Another rep said I should run them only twice a week but for a longer period of time. A third guy said I should run them every other evening for however long I thought was right.

The field manager suggested I rake up all the brown spots and do my own seeding.

“Isn’t that your job?” I said curiously.

“No,” he answered bluntly.

So, as Sue did with me, I fired him.

Then I called Vinny Pitre of O’Connell’s Landscaping, the Long Island company that had been cutting what little grass we had left.

Vinny came over, surveyed the pathetic landscape and gave me his expert assessment: “Your yard looks like hell.”

The solution, he said, was to thatch the entire property, cover it with topsoil and cover the soil with grass seed.

“It’s the right time of year to do it,” Vinny said, adding that I had to run the sprinklers twice a day, at dusk and overnight, for 30 minutes in each of our five working zones for about six weeks.

Mother Nature failed to cooperate because it didn’t rain for the first three weeks. And the sprinkler in the sixth zone was broken, so I had to water the side yard by hand with a garden hose twice every day, all while imagining a gargantuan water bill.

But eventually, like fuzz on a teenage boy’s cheeks, little green blades began to sprout from the earth.

“You’re doing a great job,” Vinny said when he came by for an inspection.

“Will my yard look as good as yours?” I asked.

“No,” Vinny answered flatly. “Nobody’s yard looks as good as mine. But you’ll have the best one in the neighborhood.”

Sue was happy to hear it.

“Finally,” I told her, “the grass will be greener on our side of the fence.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima