The St. Valentine's Day Massacre...

To those of you familiar with your mob history, you recognize the term as the day when a bunch of dudes bought the farm in a Chicago parking garage. (To those of you not familiar with the term, click the title and brush up on your mob hit history!) ...But this year it's about to adopt a new meaning.

And for the moment, I don't mean to imply that I'm going to kill grandpa, though I know the theme has been established.

No, you see, in the fair hamlet I now call home, we got a bit of nasty winter weather. It was not supposed to be at all bad, but as the rain changed to snow, and the collective precipitation froze rapidly on the roadways, things got really ugly in a big hurry. (So much so that I was braking to avoid sliding into the back end of a fellow motorist, and ended up sliding on the ice directly into a curb instead, thus throwing my alignment all outta whack, and booking my whole day tomorrow waiting at the repair shop to make sure that the alignment is all that has been compromised.)

So basically, we are all operating on the old theory, "If you don't ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO BE out, then keep your retarded ass at home." Grandpa seems to think that this conventional wisdom does not apply to him. How charming. And so, despite the fact that he is 86, and clinically diagnosed as 90% blind, and that his driving record is SEEEEEEERIOUSLY tarnished because he has repeatedly hit all the things he couldn't see, grandpa is of the belief that he simply must attend morning mass. GREAT. Factor in the particular geography of this town which puts not one, not two, but THREE school zones between him and church, and well, we can all see that this is a recipe for disaster. So basically, if he doesn't slip, fall, and break a hip before getting into his car, it's fairly certain that the St. Valentine's Day Massacre is going to not only refer to an event of Chicago mafia lore, but also to the group of school children that grandpa mows down on his way to morning mass... The upswing is that when he's put into the clink for reckless endangerment and vehicular homicide, I won't have to worry about being the one to shank him.

I have another tale for you, but I'll save it for tomorrow, because I am a tired panda!