Grandpa Joe Wasn’t THAT Grandpa Joe – A Story About Being Misunderstood

As I age, I feel my brain slowing down. I don’t always have my snappy comebacks anymore. I know exactly what I want to say, but the word won’t be delivered to my brain. Especially those nouns! Oh, the nouns. And don’t get me started on proper nouns!

Toward the end of my teaching career, my students started supplying me with the word they thought was going to be next in my sentence. Sometimes they were right. Sometimes they were not. Either way, it irritated me. But this was one of the reasons I knew it was time to stop teaching. Keeping up with a roomful of kids requires a brain that can move faster than 28 children who are either delighted to finish your sentences for you or so disinterested they haven’t been listening. AT. ALL.

When I was younger, being misunderstood made me upset because people weren’t really listening. Now, as I get older, I sometimes recognize how misunderstandings happen because I can’t always get the words out fast enough. Or maybe people are simply still ignoring me. All of these thoughts brought me back to Grandpa Joe.

Grandpa Joe Was Not My Grandfather

Grandpa Joe was my classroom hamster. I loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so much that I named my classroom hamsters after the characters in the book. Most teachers refused to have classroom pets. They were a lot of work. They often smelled, and they eventually died. But I wanted to be that cool teacher willing to go the extra mile. Instead, I became the sad, oldish woman holding lots of dead rodents.

It all started with the death of Grandpa Joe. When one of my class hamsters died, I considered it part of having a classroom pet and a pretty important teachable moment. We went through the rituals nine- and ten-year-olds go through with their teacher. We had a little funeral. We drew pictures. We read poetry. Some cried a little. We talked about buying another hamster. After a lovely ceremony, it was time to get down to gym class.

As we lined up, everyone discussed the funeral. The whispers grew louder as we tried to walk in our quiet line, and the children told other students and teachers in the hallway that Grandpa Joe had died. The teachers who overheard us gave me that disdainful I-told-you-so look that said this was exactly why they didn’t have classroom pets.

Then Came Josie

Josie was an animal lover. She was also a little girl who loved attention. Lots and lots of attention. As we walked down the hall, she continued wailing and crying, becoming a puffy-faced child who could not be consoled. The rest of us had mourned and gradually moved on. Josie had not.

I’m not a monster. I had given everybody a chance to grieve. We had put aside our math lesson for the morning to have a funeral. Eventually, though, life had to move on. I told Josie we could talk about it later. Finally, I had to become “the dreaded” strict teacher. Essentially, I had to say, “I’m sorry, but this is just a hamster. We will get another one. You’re going to have to suck this up.” I didn’t want to be that teacher, but I also didn’t want to spend my prep time consoling Josie while everyone else went to gym class. The other kids had reached the Ignore Josie Phase. This wasn’t her first rodeo.

Enter, the Principal

He liked our school to look clean and sparkly. Everyone happy and positive. A nice veneer over everything. I thought of him as Pat Sajak. He seemed to be listening, but I always suspected he was really waiting for me to stop talking so he could move on to the next contestant.

I’m sure you know what happened next. As we continued down the hall to gym, Josie was still weeping. I didn’t notice the principal anywhere near our line. I turned around with my stern teacher face and said something like, “Josie, it’s fine. We all know Grandpa Joe is no longer with us, but it is time for gym class.” Which, in retrospect, was not a particularly reassuring thing to say to an obviously distressed child.

Then I noticed the principal walking right next to Josie. He looked at me with a mixture of surprise and horror. Of course, he thought Grandpa Joe was Josie’s actual grandfather. The principal put his hand on Josie’s shoulder, took her into the office, and shut the door with a slight slam. No one asked me what happened. It was assumed I was a monster.

I dropped the rest of the class off at gym and returned to the principal’s office. The door was now open. The principal was smiling and chuckling a bit. Josie looked fine. I couldn’t even tell she had been crying. I said something like, “Did you find out Grandpa Joe was just my class hamster?”

Assumptions and Misunderstandings – and Aging

So, you might think the misunderstanding was cleared up. But I didn’t feel particularly vindicated. I’m still irritated decades later. No one cared that I had been misunderstood. The assumption was that I had done something wrong, and that was that. This became proof to me that sometimes people want to jump to conclusions.

Now I see another side of it. Misunderstandings happen incredibly fast. We hear half a sentence and supply the rest in our minds. We think we know what someone means before they’ve managed to finish saying what they mean. It’s happening even more now that I’m the person trying to retrieve a missing word while someone else “helpfully” supplies it. Sometimes it’s the right word. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes I want to scream, “That is not what I was going to say!” And sometimes, if I’m being fair, I can’t remember what I was about to say anyway.

Maybe aging hasn’t made being misunderstood any easier. I still dislike it a lot. But it has made me more aware of how misunderstandings happen. People aren’t refusing to listen. Maybe they’re impatient. Maybe I’m the one who’s impatient. Often there’s simply a gap in a conversation, and another human being rushes to fill it. And if that gap is just big enough, it can turn a dead classroom hamster into someone’s beloved grandfather.

Worth Listening To

The lesson I wish my principal had understood wasn’t really about Josie or Grandpa Joe. It was about what it feels like when someone decides they already know what happened before they’ve listened to you. What stays with me all these decades later isn’t that my principal misunderstood the situation. It’s that, for those few minutes, I didn’t feel worth listening to.

So now, when I listen, before I decide I know what someone is trying to say, I try to give them a few more seconds. I let them finish their sentence. I ask one more question, especially if I’m talking to someone whose words aren’t coming as quickly as they once did. Someone like me.

And sometimes, apparently, Grandpa Joe really is dead. He just isn’t that Grandpa Joe.

Here are two classroom hamsters who came way after Grandpa Joe. Their names were Chester 2 and Chester 3. Now THAT’s a crazy story for another time.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you feel misunderstood from time to time? How often does it happen that someone rushes to fill in your words for you? How do you react to something like that? Do you rush to fill in other peoples’ words?