Crazy Grandpa McCain Sees Conspiracy

Put away the blunderbuss, ma, Grandpa's on the warpath!

Of course we're referring to everyone's crazy Grandpa this year, John McCain. You know, he served in the military. Of course you know. There's no family mealtime that can go by without Grandpa McCain boring us kids with all his escapades. He fought the Vietnamese single-handed. He personally killed Hitler. He was there at Versailles. And he not only shot the first shot in the Civil War but the last one!

Ma looks over at us kids and gives us a dirty look. That means we sit up extra straight and look at Grandpa McCain while he's talking. But even he has his limits, and eventually he can tell we're not that into it. We want to go out to play, and he says, "Oh, go on, get out of here, you little rascals!" He fought the war for the likes of us, and this is the thanks he gets. We don't want to hear about carpet bombing villages while we're trying to eat. I can look down at my mashed potatoes and gravy and see a little lake, even an ocean, and I can see Grandpa going down, his plane demolished, him climbing up the hill, standing there at the top -- it's mashed potatoes, go on, eat them!

But now he's out on the campaign trail. And he's seeing the enemy everywhere. Nothing gets by his eagle eye. Whether it's Barack Obama, Jim Webb, Wesley Clark -- whether they served or not, they're all a bunch of scoundrels -- scalawags, like us kids. That darned eagle eye of his, you can't get away. He'll call you on it! It's all he wants to talk about.

I remember some other family warriors. My uncles -- you couldn't get them to talk about the war. Hardly. They'd rather just let it go. They didn't have much to say. That's probably the way it should be. But this is everything there is to Grandpa's life.