Raivenne-lations

What the obituary missed…

• I’m minding my business, get that funny feeling and just know someone is ogling me. I turn around and see this old man wriggling his bushy, more salt than pepper brows, with a grin so hilariously lecherous, Grouchy Marx would’ve been envious.

  I’ve just met Papa Nick.

• “If you were twenty years older and I twenty years younger, I would put a hurting on you!” This (or some variation thereof) was his favorite saying regardless of the person’s age or the subject.  It’s truly amusing when applied to children playing Chutes and Ladders who have (yet again) managed to beat him soundly at the game.

• There’s a sign on the front door as you leave that reads “Check purse for teeth”. Pretty women who did not heed this sign found out why as they often had to call someone to collect Papa Nick’s dentures. Or if still in the vicinity, immediately return to the house to give the sneaky curmudgeon back his choppers, which of course was his plan all along.

• Never leave any thing M&M around him. He would eat it and feign innocence (even when removing a stray one from his beard).

• If you blinked, you would lose at chess. If you smiled, you would lose at chess.  If you breathed, you would lose at chess. Let’s face it, you would just lose at chess, period. Yes, he was that good (or that bad ass depending on his mood…).

• “You are a young vibrant woman who is miserable for no reason other than to just be miserable. You need some dick woman.”  This was directed at his youngest sister, she was sixty-six years of age at the time.

• First hand stories (and sometimes demonstrations) of taking apart a rifle, why his brothers-at-arms were closer to him that his brother by blood, the proper way to pour wine and why the Charleston is still the best popular dance ever.

• After a particularly silly verbal exchange with the quick-witted scoundrel:

  Me: Old man, don’t make me love you!
  Papa Nick: Make love to me? Twenty years and a hurting little girl, I’ll show you what love is.
  Me: In your dreams, geezer!
  Papa Nick: Ya wanna get me summa them little blue pills and find out, juvenile?

  That was a few months ago for his 93^rd birthday, the last time I saw Papa Nick.

What was the truest part of the obituary? “…and a host of relatives and friends who will miss him greatly.”

Goodness knows, I already do…

Rest In Peace, Papa Nick.