My Pop

Back in March my grandpa, who we called Pop, passed away. The day before he passed away my husband's daughter was born (read more about that here: http://lifesmixedbag.blogspot.com/2009/05/little-history.html) so I never really took the time to think about him and how much he meant to me until just recently. As I was remembering him I remembered a great time that we had together when I was about 7 or 8.

It was the summer and Pop wanted to take me, my brother, and my cousin fishing. Well I had never been fishing of course, I was pretty young, and I did not know what all this entailed so I was very excited about it. That morning my mom dropped my brother and I off at Pop's house and little did she know that we all piled in the bed of my grandpa's truck! How fun for us but the moms would have had a heart attack had she known. On the way we stopped by the local store to get some snacks (remember sixlets?! Those were great!) and bait. At this point I had just realized that 'bait' was live crickets and worms! EWWW! I didn't really know what the 'bait' was for so little did I know that I would have to touch them if I wanted to catch anything. We made it to the lake in one piece and got the fishing poles and bait out, went to the edge of the lake and the boys all started putting hooks on the string and bait on the hooks. This was when I realized that I would have to touch the living, crawling, jumping, slithering, gross bugs! I tried to play it cool, acted like it didn't bother me. I didn't want to be thought of as uncool! So I thought I would start off with the cricket first and reached into the little box they were in and immediately I jerked my hand out and when I did oh it was BAD! This sent the entire box flying and it spilled on the ground. SO that sent me jumping and pllloooop right in to the water! It was shallow, luckily, so I hoped out as fast as I went in. But the boys and my Pop were already in hysterics. I started crying... still soaking wet my Pop came over, wrapped a big towel around me and baited my line for me the rest of the day! What a great grandpa (and man in general) he was!