Shortly after the birth of our second child, I began to notice that there was something terribly wrong with my parents. It was nothing I could really put my finger on at first, just vague and random impressions and oddities. It all came together one night while we were all seated around the dinner table at their home.

My son, then less than one year old, was in my father's lap, drooling on a cracker. My daughter, then two, was babbling incoherently about nothing in particular as she was often prone to do and mashing her supper into goo with the palm of her hand. Suddenly, my son throws his damp cracker on the floor, then proceeds to crawl up onto the table. My father allows him to do this, and my mother also says nothing. I realize that my son is heading towards the lazy susan in the middle of the table, and more than likely intends to sit upon it and try to spin. I look towards my parents and realize that they also are aware of his intent, and yet they just sit there with big dopey smiles on their faces, watching his progress. Finally, I realize that it is up to me to be the voice of reason, so I clear my throat and say: "We don't allow him to do that at home." At this, my dad sheepishly retrieves Isaac from the middle of the table and gives him another cracker to dampen.

At that moment, I realized what was wrong.... my parents had gone soft on me. When I was a child, my mother wouldn't allow me to have more than one hand on the table, much less crawl on top of it. The sense of Twilight Zone surrealism deepened as my mother got up and happily scooped the soggy cracker up off the floor, then went over to my daughter and wiped dinner goo off the palm of her hand. Throwing food on the floor and playing with food were execution offenses when my sister and I were growing up, yet she happily tolerates it now. When did this happen? How and why did it happen? Does it happen to all grandparents? I'm still not sure of this last question, but I'm discovering more and more examples of this type of behavior.

I'll take for example a friend of mine who has a five year old granddaughter. I had always thought that this guy was pretty normal until he related the following anecdote. His phone rang one night around ten one night. It was his granddaughter, who had apparently crept out of bed unnoticed and gotten to the telephone.

"Grandpa?" she whispered.

"Yes, honey?" he replied. "Why are you whispering?"

"Mama doesn't know I'm calling." she whispered back. "Grandpa? I'm hungry. We don't have any food."

"What?" he said. "How can you not have any food?"

"Daddy ate it all."

"Well, what do you want to eat?"

"I want some Taco Bell. Bye Grandpa."

After hanging up the phone he rushed to tell his wife the whole story and they had a good laugh together before going to bed. No. That's what you would expect to happen. That's what a normal person would have done, but this demented person actually gets dressed, drives down to Taco Bell, then delivers two sackfuls of Taco Bell to her doorstep. Of course, the part about there not being any food in the house was a ruse, but this was his granddaughter we're talking about.

See what I mean? Whacked! That's what they are, whacked! Plumb out of their minds. What scares me is that in fifteen years or so, this could happen to me. I can just see myself allowing all of the things that drive me nuts right now. Twenty years from now, I could be walking through Wal-Mart with my five-year old grandson who has his right index finger rammed up his nose to the second knuckle and not say anything about it. Whereas now, this is the kind of thing that makes me want to put my children up for adoption.

I guess what I really need is the perspective of a grandparent. Maybe it's because as a grandparent, you realize just how quickly little ones grow up, and you're determined to enjoy it more this time.

Could be.

Or maybe they're just thinking: Whew! Better them than us!

2001 Steve Wingate