Eighth Annual Cute Grandbaby Story Contest

This is to announce the eighth annual Cute Grandbaby story contest. As with all grand ideas, simplicity is at the root of this gathering of love-boasts:

Send me your favorite story proving how remarkably smart, cute, funny, adorable, irreverent, perceptive (or all of the aforementioned!) your grandchild truly is. Take 250 words (or less), and keep the snapshots for the family album.

You're permitted one story per grandchild, and in some six weeks we'll announce a proud winner. We'll publish this winning entry, along with the runners-up, and send a $50 savings bond to the proud grandmother or grandfather. Please, no handwritten scrawls. If your computer is in for repairs, borrow the local library computer.

(Include all relevant names, ages, addresses, locale of the anecdote, and a daytime phone number for a possible interview. Send via snail mail, or email.  If you wish, fax c/o Lindeman, 404/815-5787.)

Here, now, to strike the mood are several stories left over from previous contests:

The Mary Lou Schlink family is together in church and the newest reader present is granddaughter Julie, age six. Grandchild begins, "Our father, who art in ---------."

Julie to grandmother: "What's this next word?" Grandmother to Julie: "You know what that word is. It begins with H, and it's a place we all want to go someday."

Julie, with a proud grin forming: "I know... Hollywood!" (Footnote to the story: the same Ms. Julie is away at college, in Los Angeles, just now; she's majoring in drama and still wants to go to Hollywood.)

Grandparents John and Gloria Monday, Cocoa, FL recall when granddaughter Stephanie, three at the time, had difficulty learning to skip. Her teacher saw that she was hopping, and said: "Stephanie, why aren't you skipping?" The quick-thinking child: "I'm skipping in another language."

Some submissions speak to the boundless love that grandchildren inspire. Grandma Sophy Rozinsky, West Newton, PA writes of a shopping expedition in which grandson Nicholas, then 18 months, surprised a fellow shopper (an old man) by smiling and waving at him. The account continues:

"The little old man replied: 'What a beautiful little boy.' With that, the man reached into his shopping cart and handed Nicholas a box of cookies. He said, 'My wife just passed away, and I have no family nearby. But your little boy has brightened my day... and, I need to give him something.'"

Grandmother Rozinsky titled her narrative: "A Box of Love Crackers." She concludes the crackers perhaps symbolized "a bond of love between a stranger, in this case an old man with tears streaming down his face, and a loving and trusting little boy, our Nicholas."

Grandparents command a special authority by virtue of their years, their antiquity. In addition, they are comfortable people, arriving as they do in the lives of their grandchildren with relevant history: "You are my father's father?" I was asked by one of three spirited, red-haired Florida granddaughters. Thus, began our family love-banquet, which continues to this moment.

Lastly, grandchildren are life's bonus: live long enough, and you receive the bonus. Now, tell me all about your bonus babies!