my funny Pop-Pop

I am blessed to still have one living grandparent, my Pop-Pop; I am even more blessed that I grew up in the town next to my grandparents and probably saw them every day as a toddler.  My sister and I are very close with them.  Usually when kids trip and fall, they cry for their mother, not me... I cried for my Nana. Unfortunately, my Nana died 3 years ago and now my Pop-Pop is getting old and my family decided it was time for him to be moved into an independent living facility.  This was the best decision my mother and her siblings have made.  Where my Pop-Pop lives is the coolest place ever; it is college for old people!  My Pop-Pop loves it and he is absolutely adorable there; he is like the big man on campus!

one of my  ALL time favorite pictures,
my Pop-Pop trying to make me laugh when I was 20 months and a flower girl at my aunt's wedding

Anyways here is the reason why my Pop-Pop is the funniest old guy around...where he is living is a reasonable monthly rent, but being old and forgetting things, my Pop-Pop feels like he is going to be bankrupt soon.  (This is not the case at all, my dad is an Accountant and before we moved him, we made sure he could afford this for the upcoming years.)  So as a Christmas gift, my Pop-Pop sent my siblings and I money; we called him one night at dinner to thank him.  When he picked up the phone and I said "Hi Pop-Pop", and he said "who is this?" (he has 12 grandchild).  Me, being the wise guy said back to him "guess?" Now I know where I get my wise remarks from because he responded with "oooohh your talking fast so this has to be the youngest one."  He was on speaker phone saying all this and made my family laugh as we ate dinner.  Then as we thanked him, he snapped back at us in his Italian Bronx accent saying "enjoy it because its the last gift you will ever get from me, I AM GOING BROKE!"  Again, my family started to laugh, because we know he is not going broke and that he has enough money and then some to live there for years. 

My Pop-Pop makes me laugh without even trying.  He is a great story teller and shares his story with anyone who has ears literally.   Poor Yankee fans, if my Pop-Pop sees you in a Yankee hate regardless of where you are and what you are doing, he will stop you to talk and tell you how he grew up 3 blocks from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and how he met Joey D.  When I am with him and he does this, it is sometimes embarrassing but I just got to laugh because it so cute and funny of him.  And I should talk, when I fight with people about being a die hard Yankee Fan, I find myself saying, "my family grew up 3 blocks from Yankee Stadium" just as my funny Pop-Pop does.

Are elders in your family just as funny as my Pop-Pop?