How to celebrate Grandparent's Day

Hi neighbors. In case you forgot, this Sunday is Grandparent's Day. Grandparents, children and, of course, grandchildren, all wonder what they are supposed to do to celebrate such a noteworthy holiday.

As usual there are reams of paperless pages on the Internet (most of which contain activities you have to print out onto paper to actually use) offering ideas, tips, activities, recipes, and coloring pages to give you some thoughts about how to celebrate Grandparent's Day.

If you are a grandparent like myself, you might want to celebrate this special day doing something quiet that doesn't involve trips to the kitchen, white glue or construction paper.

Maybe an activity that you can do from your recliner -- even better, from your recliner using a remote control. Hey, we worked for the title of grandparent and we deserve a little respect for our longevity if nothing else. It is OUR day after all.

Seen from the flip side though, it is as much a day for the grandchildren as the grandparents. After all, you can't have one without the other.

But it should not necessarily be a day for the parents to expect the grandparents to baby-sit.

I called my friend Flossie (who occasionally avows she never had children) and asked her what she had planned to do for Grandparent's Day.

I could hear at least five of her eight grandchildren's screaming voices in the background, along with the occasional bang of furniture being overturned, doors being slammed and dogs barking.

She must have been having a bad-hair day because she answered tersely that she was just thinking about it and had decided to take her grandchildren to visit a distant cousin who belonged to a cult that for centuries had made it a habit to barbecue grandchildren on a spit on Grandparent's Day.

When I reminded her that Grandparent's Day was a new holiday only created in the late 20th century, she calmed down enough to admit she had other, more conventional grandmotherly plans. She was taking all eight of them to see a day-long marathon of The Brady Bunch television show at a local theater.

Her plans were to buy all of them large boxes of popcorn (she would rather hear the munching than the arguments) but she wouldn't get them any drinks. "Drinks just make them have to make trips to the lobby and I will miss the show taking them," she explained.

"But won't trips to the water fountain in the lobby cause the same problem?" I asked.

"Let them eat cake!" she snarled and hung up the phone.

She wasn't much help after all.

My grandchildren, possibly like your own, are nearly perfect in every way. They live in another state.

But I'm certain they will all call -- at least the 7-year-old one will. Since I would hate for her to suffer the inevitable pangs of guilt were she to forget to call her grandmother on National Grandparent's Day (meaning celebrated in EVERY state) I have told her, er, reminded her, at least six times, to call me Sunday.

The child assumes it is I who have the memory problem. "Grandma, do you know how old I am?" she asked last week.

"Gee, how old are you?" "Don't you remember? I'm seven, Grandma!" :Oh, my, you are an old woman!" I countered.

"No, Grandma. Mommy is the old woman." She giggled as we both heard the 'hey now!' from her Mom in the background.

"Do you know how old Grandma is?" I asked, suddenly wondering how far advanced in math she was.

At her whispered 'no' I told her. I could hear her shocked gasp quite clearly.

"Wow! You ARE old!" Well, they don't call me Grandma for nothing.

So what have I planned on doing for Grandparent's Day? Sitting in my recliner, drinking coffee and reading a new Sherlock Holmes novel (if the grandchildren don't talk too long on the phone and keep me from my afternoon nap.) You remember Sherlock Holmes, don't you? Flossie gave me the book the other day with this hastily scrawled inscription in it: "He never had children."