Tuesday, March 23, 2010

If it happened...

My younger son Sean just asked me what Dad and I would do if all our grown kids died in a common accident and we "inherited" our 8 grandchildren, who are all aged 6 and under.

Uh hem.

Well, as soon as we gathered up all the necessary clothes, sippy cups, pacies, Monster Trucks, Barbies, etc., etc., etc. and scooped out spaces in our house to bed down each little head - I would call the TLC network. We'd immediately be signed up for our own reality show, which would nicely cover the expenses.

Our show might be called, "Aging at the Speed of Light".

The children would all flourish and Dad and I would rapidly deteriorate.

Episode #4 would be "Mimi's Makeover". It would be a tragic failure.

By the end of Season One all the kids would be treated by TLC to excursions to Chicago and New York City for appearances on Oprah, Good Morning America and Larry King Live.

Larry would look better than Dad by then.

By the mid-way point of Season Two I would be training to be on "Dancing with the Stars" and all of America would be pulling for me, being the obvious underdog, what with Sally Field, Cheryl Tiegs and Christie Brinkley, my eerily (what's up with that?) youthful age-group counterparts giving sorrowful interviews to PEOPLE magazine about how "sweet" I am and how they soooooo wished I could get the hang of the lunges, "Bless her heart".

That body language expert gal on Fox would dissect film clips of my eye twitches and declare that I was "stressed".

Duh.

Dr. Perper would come on and state that I was probably suffering from an extremely delayed onset of Progeria, seeing as how I was only 60 and looked 96.

Then finally someone would observe that Dad and I seemed "happy" to have 16 little arms around our necks and that would cause a flurry of thousands of Facebook hits agreeing that they had never seen such contented (albeit BUSY) grandparents.

Each evening Dad and I would fill the punchbowl with popcorn and set all the little ones (those with teeth) down in front of it on beach towels as we watch episodes of Andy Griffith together.

It wouldn't be so bad.