There is a special memory I have of the kindest man in the world…

Way back when I was just a tike I had a grandparent who we called grandpy. He had a bad case of diabetes, so he had to take insulin shots everyday. This diabetes eventually got so bad they had to amputate his toe. Now here’s for a grandpy story. Grandpy use to  always tell fibs and stories to scare us younguns. Me and my younger brother were the youngest of all our cousins by atleast a year, my younger brother by 3 years. So we being the youngest got the biggest, scariest most far fetched stories from grandpy. Grandpy told us that rats ate his toe in one big bite! And that if we weren’t careful they’d come for us aswell. Us being young got scared by this and didn’t sleep a wink that night, it scared the living hell out of us. Grandpy was notorious for his fibs and crazy stories, the most memorable story that gave me the shivers was the one about the A shaped house next door to my grandpy’s house. He said that the old owner of the A frame hung him self while he burned the house down. This A fram was a scary place. Big chains and padlocks locking the giant, rusty iron gates. Overgrown vines and stray vines strangling the house. It was freaky! I guess that’s what made the story so scary. Now from what you’ve read so far grandpy sounds like a bit of a child scarer right? Well I assure you it was always in good fun. He was always there to snuggle with and sing us lullabyes with the words left out because he didn’t know half of them. He was a good man.

The diabetes got worse. It worked his way up his leg untill they had to amputate his leg till just below the knee. Us being older didn’t believe the rats thing this time. But we did believe the ghost of the A frame owner! No just kidding we were about 7 and 9 by this stage, me being 9 by this stage. But honestly that A frame was scary. Me and my closest cousin Bryn, cousin older by about one year. Were up at the grandparents (granny and grandpy’s) house up at Whitianga. Decided to venture over to the old A frame to see if we could find the body of the owner (at that time we still believed grandpy), but we were too short and couldn’t work our way over the massive iron gates. I think it was for the greater good.