It was 13 years ago and my then 86 year old mother was in a nursing home/extended care facility. They have a large restaurant area and we got reservations. We'd been seated and the hostess or whatever came and said we could get our food. It was served as a smorgasbord. I was sitting next to my favorite grand daughter (she was the youngest so obviously my favorite). We discussed it and decided I should go get my food first and mommy, on the other side of her, would go after I got back. Seemed like a plan.

So I got up and as I went behind a privacy partition, the little one yelled at the top of her lungs "Gwampa". There were probably 200 folks in the room and almost all of them laughed. She wasn't about to lose her grandpa in a big room like that. And all the other old folks laughed. They understood.

Color me shocked. I opened this thread expecting a holiday tale from a cranky curmudgeon!