Elephants and Grandchildren never forget

Careful, Elephants and Grandchildren Never Forget

by Andy Rooney 

 

http://www.biography.com/people/andy-rooney-9542557

Andy Rooney was a well know radio and television personality.  From 1978 to 2011 he did a weekly broadcast called “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney” a segment of the CBS program 60 minutes.

 Andrew Aitken “Andy” Rooney was also a Grandparent and on September 8, 1984 he wrote an article for the Free Lance-Star entitled “Careful, elephants and grandchildren never forget”.   Aside from the very catchy title this article hold two pieces of wisdom or truths for us today.

 The first appears at beginning of the article 

 “it seems to me that grandfathers are a lot younger than they used  be before I got to be one… they were kindly old folks and their grandchildren could do no wrong in their elderly eyes”. 

He went on to stress he had no intention to being ‘that’ kind of a grandparent.  He was a dynamic, engaging and controversial figure and the idea of being seen as, a "loveable, gray-haired old codger who approves of everything" was too much, it just was not him.

Here is the first truth.  We are and get to be dynamic, engaging and controversial.  We get to be ourselves as grandparents.  Really who else could we be?  Yet we are bombarded daily by images, cute sayings and our own expectations to be a 'certain type of grandparent'.   Personally I want to be like Granny Clampett in the TV series Beverly Hillbillies.

The second piece of wisdom is at the very end of the article:

 “I can’t figure out how Justin learned how to be a grandchild faster than I learned how to be a grandfather"

We don't need to worry about how to become a grandparent our grandchildren will teach us just as our children taught us to be parents.  We learn who we can be as grandparents through being open to who our grandchildren are, and are becoming on the marvelous adventure called life.  To read 1987 article click on Andy Rooney's name at the beginning of the post it is a link that will take you to the article.

Grandma Snyder

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