Tuesday, November 4, 2008

A Letter to Myself

Brandi, over at The Douglass Diaries blogged about Brad Paisley's song, A Letter to Myself. She asked what we write in a letter to our 17 year old selves. WTG for the thought provoking posts, Brandi!! So, here's my list.

1. You do NOT know everything. Not even close.
2. Take care of your mom. She needs you now, issues and all.
3. Boys should not be the center of your attention right now!
4. School work is way more important than it seems.
5. Your dad is not going to send you to college to party. (My 18 year old self needed that)
6. Get involved in your family history now. When you decide you're interested, there won't be anyone left to tell you what you want to know.
7. Brandi is totally right about Tom Cruise. (Hey, I'm writing this letter now, right?)
8. When you get a job, skip the invitation to the beach. Everyone was asleep anyway, and you'll lose the job. Trust me.


There's more, but this post got me thinking about how cool my grandpa was. When my brother and I were kids, grandpa would write us these letters. They were always stories, written in his hand, but written as if the dog was talking. They were really hilarious stories, about what the dog was doing, thinking, etc. And there was always Monopoly money in the letters. The letter always ended with "Let me know when you find a place to spend this money".
We finally asked grandma a year or so ago where grandpa got the monopoly money from. She said he would buy the games at yard sales so that he had plenty of money to send in his letters.

He had a workshop in the backyard. The radio always played "easy listening", but it was more like old timey elevator music... no words, just music. And he'd hand us a hammer, and give us scraps of wood and a bunch of rusty nails in an old coffee can, and tell us to build something. Not that we ever built anything..... but it was cool, to be out there with him.

He made "special" dough balls, out of bread and something, and gave them to us with fishing poles to go fish in the canal. Never did get a fish dinner out of that, either.

He had a bunch of parakeet cages fastened on the outside of his workshop. Never knew what the fascination was with parakeets, but he had a bunch.

He drove a backhoe when they lived in Florida. He took my brother and I for rides around the yard with him. It was cool too.

Hey, Brandi? Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Hugs!

3 comments:

Tom H said...

Diana, Thanks for the stop by my blog. Boy, your Grandpa sounds like a grandpa should be. I hope you still have the letters. Our family keeps all letters. Just last week we reread a bunch that went back and forth between kids and us when the kids were in college...Funny, funny.

Diana said...

Tom, I wish we had saved those letters. Being a military family, I guess the moving around taught us to "pack light"!

Brandi said...

It's been so fun reading what others would tell their 17 year old self! :)

Your grandpa sounds a lot like my great grandfather--even the music always playing in the workshop!

~Brandi