Anecdotes of note

Some of the best emails in my inbox these days come from my nonagenarian grandmother, containing sweet notes, punny sayings, and then gems like this that are deserving of a wider audience.

In the excerpts below, Grandma remembers the three times when my late grandfather got hurt as an adult, or almost hurt in one case:

"He had few physical injuries even though he led a very active life. The one time I remember was when he sprained his ankle when the paint crew was working on a church in Rochester. As I recall they wanted a metal star removed from the steeple and your Dad climbed the ladders, removed it and proceeded to carry it down. All went well until he tripped on the bottom step, fell and ended up with a severely sprained ankle!"

"Anyway it never deterred him climbing ladders. [One summer] he was painting on a house at the corner of 7th Ave. & 36th St and in putting up the metal ladder it hit an electric line. Fortunately he was standing on the ground and although it burnt a rung on the ladder he felt only a strong shock. It did put out the lights on part of College Hill for awhile."

"I'm sure you've heard his story of riding an English bike, falling and breaking a wrist just a few days before the D-Day invasion, and when it came time for his company to take part in the invasion he pulled his sleeve over the cast and told the commander the doctor had OK'd his going in with the troops."

Considering his service in World War II, his years working in a Pennsylvania steel mill, and then decades of activity as a shop teacher and painter, plus just the kind of person he was, the fact that these were apparently the only three scrapes he got himself into is quite remarkable to me.

Grandma's ability to recall these and so many other stories is equally remarkable.