Allie and I have been hanging out together a few days a month for several years. She’s nine and has been my frequent sidekick since she learned to navigate bathrooms on her own.
We have three other granddaughters here and spend a good bit of time with them. But they don’t share most of the interests that Allie and I have in common.
Before the virus thing, we could go to Northwestern ballgames during whatever sport was in season and spend a day. We kept our energy up with popcorn and hot dogs.
Doing fun things these days is a little more challenging. She called a couple of Saturdays ago and asked to come hang out.
Her timeline was flexible, but she wanted Chick-Fil-A for lunch. Fortunately, I had already eaten. After paying for her chicken sandwich, fries, six-piece nuggets, parfait with fruit and blue Powerade, I could not afford another meal.
The new Northwestern women’s basketball coaches were there, and she was thrilled to meet them. They invited her to sit on the bench with the team for one of their games. She has asked me several times to remind them of that.
Allie asked the coaches where they were before, how many games they won, if they had any new players and where the players were from. It was like an ESPN interview.
Dining in was out, so she ate lunch at my office. I showed her the video of Tim Conway accidentally numbing his own hand and leg playing the role of a dentist on the Carol Burnett show.
We watched it three times and she never stopped laughing. She wanted to see the part once more before we left where Conway had to drape his numbed leg over a rolling chair to get around.
On the downtown riverbank, we saw low-riding, overloaded party barges and amateur canoers and kayakers trying to keep their vessels upright.
She loves sports and asked if there were any games on television.
The first televised golf tournament of the season was on and we went to the house to watch it.
As she watched and talked about birdies and bogeys, she said she could teach me to play gin rummy. She shuffled the cards better than I do and explained the game. We played four hands and quit when she got ahead.
Allie learned the game from her kinfolks from Avoyelles Parish on the other side of the family. She said they speak Cajun, and she likes how it sounds. “If somebody is named Cooper, they call him Kuppa,” she said. Our conversations take a lot of turns.
We went out and watched some softball at Parc Natchitoches and stopped by the golf course. She and her family were going to the beach that week, and she wanted to practice for putt putt golf.
She knocked her three-foot putt 30 yards off the putting green. I’m worried she might take out a pedestrian or passing car at the putt putt course.
I told her about Jim Croce’s plane crash and showed her where it happened. She listened to Bad, Bad Leroy Brown on my phone. She liked the story but didn’t care for the music.
When I took her home, she said she would call when they got back from the beach to hang out again.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES