Tell Me a Story – Swimming Grandpa

Tell Me a Story Challenge :

Choose a person.  Then do any or all of the following:

• Make a list of the top ten stories about this person, a word or phrase will do.
• Choose one story and tell a compelling, short version that will interest your family members in one minute or less.
• Tell a more detailed version of that story including photos if you have them.

Note:  I’ve decided to reverse the order in my post.  If you are reading this, you like stories so I’ll start with the full story, then the bite-sized story to hook my family members, then the list of ten stories.

My grandparents had an indoor swimming pool and hot tub.  Usually an indoor pool means a big fancy house.  My grandparents had a nice, but modest, older home in Logan, Utah.  My grandmother had health problems.  It was suggested that she swim daily so the pool was built.

As a kid, the indoor pool was a favorite part of visiting Grandma and Grandpa.  We would swim all day long taking the shortest possible meal breaks we could get away with.  Grandpa was the self-appointed, designated adult swimmer.  He would play water volleyball and basketball with us, have camel fights with us, judge our diving competitions, watch our holding our breath competitions to declare the winner, help with the dive for the sea shells or diving rings on the pool bottom games, play Marco Polo, and best of all “Here we go to say hello.”

“Here we go to say hello” was Grandpa’s group soothing game and we loved it.  It was his, we’ve-played-every-other-game-and-everyone’s-getting-tired-and-I-better-calm-this-down-game.  At least, that’s how it seemed to me.  We would all grab onto him and he would walk around the pool singing, “Here we go to say hello, hello chair.”  Then we would all say, “Hello chair.”  Then off we would go, Grandpa walking through the pool singing until we stopped and said hello to something else.  We said hello to all sorts of things – towels, sea shells, the clock, the basketball hoop, Grandma when she poked her head in to check on us.  We loved that game.  I loved gliding around the pool, holding onto one of my very most favorite people in the whole world, singing and laughing with my siblings and cousins.

I had a swimming Grandpa.  He was the sort of Grandpa who wore himself out for us, spending hours on end in the pool.  He loved me completely and I knew it.  I am one lucky girl.

One Minute Story:

My Grandparents had an indoor pool and Grandpa would swim and play games with us for hours on end.  My favorite game was “Here we go to say hello.”

Top Ten Stories List for my Grandpa (stories specific to my personal memories of him):

• Swimming Grandpa
• Last Sunday lesson
• Repentance
• “He’s my best friend”
• “I think you can go a little over the speed limit”
• “Either I’ll wake up and see the face of my sweetheart or my sweet mother”
• Ice cream before dinner
• Swinging in the park
• The quilt
• Long drives and stories