I told the story recently of the passing of my Grandmother and it occurred to me afterwords that while I’ve done a pretty good job of honoring my promise to my Grandmother Fisher to tell the stories of my Grandfather’s life (and subsequently of her life) to my friends over the years, I’ve not recorded them here. So here’s one of my favorites about my Grandmother Fisher. A mischievous sense of humor tends to run in my family, to some extent on both sides but especially on the Fisher side, and this is an example of that.

For many years over the course of my childhood my sister Kirsten and I would travel to Ohio for a week or two each summer to spend time with our grandparents and extended family. Both sides of the Family, Hamilton and Fisher, had their roots in Ohio – the Fishers in Akron and the Hamiltons in Wooster. We’d divide time between the families.

One year when we went out, when I was around 11 or 12, the Fishers picked us up at the airport and brought us back to their house. When we got to the house my Grandmother began to complain that she wasn’t feeling well and disappeared into another room while my Grandfather brought us into the den and settled us into easy chairs. As we chatted my Grandmother came in. Suddenly she clutched her hand to her chest and exclaimed something about really not feeling well, then leaned over and upchucked into my lap.

!!!

I looked down to find this large glistening mass of putrid green… stuff. It looked more like snot than anything else. I nearly leapt out of my chair, but meanwhile I noticed both my Grandparents were cracking up, exclaiming about the look on my face and how they’d pulled one over on me and so on. I prodded the stuff in my lap and discovered it was cool to the touch and concluded that whatever it was it wasn’t harmful.

Long story short, it was a kids toy that I had never heard of. I think it was called Slime, though I can’t recall. I do remember that it came in a small trash can, and that the following school year it was all the rage and ended up being banned from our classroom because of all the hi-jinks folks were pulling with it.

My Grandparents Fisher were fond of pranks of this nature. This is my second favorite of all the ones they ever pulled, and the best one my Grandmother pulled.