A Reasonable Request

I bought my first car—a weary old ’91 T-bird—the summer of 2002. It had had a rough life, but any respite it might have had by coming into my possession was quickly derailed when, on its second day under my ownership, I pulled too close around a corner and ended up with a massive dent in the passenger side door (I was pulling it into the mechanic’s garage to have its emissions and inspections done, no less). Luckily, my boyfriend of a year, Keaton, was adept at car maintenance, and he viewed the minor mishap as an opportunity to upgrade the peeling silver paint to something a little less…homely. Over the next several weeks we picked the paint color and began making the preparations to give my sad little vehicle a much needed facelift.

About this same time, my Grandpa Campbell’s temple recommend expired. Normally this wouldn’t be such a big deal, but there was a temple session coming up that my parents wanted to attend, and no time to get his recommend renewed before that day arrived. When it did, they could only find one explanation for why they were getting ready to go without taking him with them. The reason? They told him he hadn’t had a bath, and they didn’t have time to help him take one. He couldn’t really argue, so they left without incident.

For me, this same sunny Saturday had become an opportunity for Keaton and me to get down to business, and in my family’s ample driveway we began to undertake the task of sanding the peeling paint from my T-bird in preparation for its makeover. My parents were long gone, and though my siblings were swarming the house, we had the driveway to ourselves. It was a pleasant afternoon. We parked beneath the tree at the top of the driveway, right at the end of the walk leading to the front door. We were busily chatting--Keaton was working on the drivers side, while I took the passenger--when the door of the house slowly swung open and Grandpa hobbled out. We were accustomed to his habits, he spent most of the day walking a circuit around the inside of the house, and sometimes in his wanderings he would include a jaunt down the front sidewalk and back. But this time his movements seemed more purposeful. I watched with curiosity as he shuffled slowly to my boyfriend's side and said something to him in a very low voice. Keaton's face suddenly took on a peculiar look of confusion and surprise--and perhaps a dash of horror.

"Well..." Grandpa said, then continued his amble back into the house.

"What was that?" I asked Keaton. "What did he say to you?"

The shell-shocked expression had not faded from his face. "Your grandpa just asked me to give him a bath. He said it wasn't a woman's job." He paused. "You're not going to make me do it, are you?"

I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Needless to say, Grandpa passed the rest of that day unbathed. And four years later, I married the boy who might have been willing to give himself up to the ultimate test of devotion to his girlfriend.

Which is, of course, bathing her eighty year old grandfather. An entirely reasonable request.