My Grandpa, the Hero

No, I'm not joking. My grandpa is a hero. Last night I received this email from him:

I heard a soft voice say, "Dwight come here."
I had heard that voice before and knew something was not right.
I was by her side -- real fast -- saw the snake and knew it was time to play HERO.
I followed the thing downstairs and shot it with my pellet gun.

INSTANT HERO Feels good ( the hero thing )

Oh --the picture of Colleen with the snake was taken after it was dead.
Things are back to normal now-- I will wear the HERO HAT for a few days and then back to normal until the next time she needs me to play HERO.
Y'all have a nice day

Now you may be thinking, 'Big deal, he killed a snake.' Not me. I don't do snakes. Sure I might be okay if I was at the zoo and got to touch one being held by a trainer but i'm a firm believer that snakes should either be a) in the wild b) dead. I'm sure I should be more pragmatic about it and while I realize that snakes aren't evil, they still scare the *expletive deleted* out of me.

My grandpa is going to turn 80 in August. This means that not only did he manage to be a hero but at 80 he is doing things that would give me pause. I'd probably be on the phone to the pest control or grabbing my neighbor (who is a cop) to borrow his gun (not that he would let me). I sure as heck wouldn't try to kill it myself with a pellet gun.

I've seen my grandpa do some pretty amazing things. He took two old bikes and a lawnmower handle, welded them together so that my brother and I had a super tall bike. I need to find a picture to really show you what that looked like. We even took it through the parade around town that year.

I can remember as little kid thinking that grandpa could fix anything. Seems like he was always building or fixing something. He even managed to survive almost falling through our porch roof back in Callao. He cut down a tree in that yard too.

Grandpa Patterson is always good for a laugh or joke. He can even do magic. He cut our hair, used a saw to cut out wooden figures and always has some neat little toy or gadget to show off.

He also taught my how to 'be an Indian'. I miss sitting on the floor, doing my best to not move or laugh because if I did that imaginary snake would bite me. Funny thing, I can still use that to make it through pain.

Edit My mom left a comment that I had somehow forgotten:

Your grandpa has also performed CPR on his neighbor more than once and probably saved his life both times.

I don't believe the grandparents are reading my blog but I know some family members have. I feel like I've probably taken having such an awesome set of grandparents for granted. This is my shout out to them.

We love and miss you.