Better than Fiction

Over thirty years ago, the small rural town of Ellijay, GA had an Ace Hardware store on its historic square. One day, my grandmother and grandfather decided to drive from the farm into town and make a visit, and they brought my younger brother David along. David was around four years old at this time, and notoriously cute with a blonde bowl haircut and pink chubby cheeks. 

As my grandparents were shopping around the store, a clerk bent down and asked David what they were looking for. “I’m looking for a trashcan,” David responded. “Well, we have quite a selection, young man,” the clerk smiled.

 

He led my brother to a section of the store that had a variety of trashcans, large and small, metal and plastic. “Well, son, which one do you want?” he asked. David took his time. He browsed each and every model before making his final selection. "That one," he said as he pointed upward. Gleaming high above their heads sat a large outdoor metal trashcan. The clerk smiled and told him he’d be right back with a ladder.

A few minutes later, as the clerk precariously made his way down the steps of the rickety ladder with the trashcan in hand, my grandparents were preparing to check out and noticed what was happening. They came upon the scene just as the out-of-breath employee set the trashcan on the ground in front of my brother. “Thank you very much, sir,” David said to the man. He then proceeded to remove a big wad of bubblegum from his mouth and throw it into the can. 

My grandparents just looked at each other in silence. My grandpa says that he and my grandmother grabbed David by the hand and "high-tailed it out of there" to avoid laughing hysterically in front of the clerk who had gone to such trouble to help his young customer. Thirty years later and we are still telling this story.

I especially love to listen to my grandfather recount it; he has a hard time getting it out through the fits of laughter that accompany his remembrance. Just the other day when I called him to make sure I had the details of the story right, his joyous laughter seemed to promulgate through the phone lines every few seconds. He was trying to speak in complete sentences, but his laughs just kept breaking through. We both hung up positively in tears from belly laughing so robustly.  

Whenever I am having a particularly bad day, I like to think on my family's funny stories, because simply conjuring them up in my mind often causes me to laugh out loud. And a good chuckle can turn my outlook around completely. I hope this story adds a boost to your mood today! Happy laughing!

Adapted from my column,"The Upside of Downsizing," published January 26, 2012 in the Ellijay Times-Courier.