Day 156: Doug the Shark

Spent the afternoon with Gramps yesterday in his seniors' residence. The one where there's six dudes to probably 200 ladies. Gramps likes those odds. He takes full advantage. Around his granddaughters, he's a proper gent. But get him around Joy, the 60-something blonde firecracker and watch out. He gets his flirt on like nobody's business.

Gramps plays pool with Joy a few times a week. I suggested he teach me to play, thinking maybe Joy would join us and I could watch him in action. But Joy's a busy woman. "I wish I could stay and play," she said brightly, turning on the Enrique Inglesias CD for us before she left. "Oh, I bet you would," Gramps growled back at her, squeezing her arm. Joy giggled and squirmed like a school girl.

This man is NINETY-FIVE.

And even though I'd imagined my first billiards experience to be more Coyote Ugly and less Tuesdays With Morrie, Gramps and I had a lot of fun just the two of us. As long as I had the ambulance on speed-dial, that is.

He may be a walking Viagra commercial, but there were points when I thought it was game over for dear old Douglas. Every once and awhile, he'd lean over and appear to be gasping silently for breath. I'd start lunging for my cell phone, but then he'd straighten up and say, "Yellow. Corner pocket," like nothing was wrong.

The man is a shark.

And mostly blind.

I'm baffled how someone who can't see past his nose can manage to get a 3-inch ball into a tiny hole eight feet away. Does he guess? Is it a fluke? Or it some kind of Obi Wan Kenobi Jedi Master trick?

Don't get me wrong: he wasn't perfect. He's totally colourblind, so half the time he'd call pink and shoot yellow. And he just avoided the dark-coloured balls altogether because he can't decipher green to save his life and refuses to admit it.

And if I was ever searching for the roots of my perfectionism, I think I've found it in Gramps. "That just burns me up," he'd grumble after botching a shot that required him to hoist his bony century-old ass up onto the table and from shoot behind his back. "There's something fundamentally wrong with my aim."

He's lying about his age. I'm sure of it.