Understanding Names: Coolness is Overrated, Obsolete, and Lamentable

Posted 1/6/25

Children’s children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children. -Prov. 17:6

Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you. -Deut. 32:7

(A rare mostly non-Alzheimer’s related piece. No animals were harmed in the writing of this post.)

I became a grandparent at 3am give or take on 12/27/24. There are very few days in life that you can know, beyond the shadow of doubt, that the day would be truly “life-changing”. No, I don’t mean the “life changing” that Hollywood tells us comes from watching whatever next movie has overspent its budget nor what Madison Ave tells us we just have to own to bring joy. No, I mean an event like our marriage, the birth of our children, the passing of our loved one with dementia, or, now for me, becoming a grandparent. There was no mystery that things would never be the same. My eyes were wide open to knowing things would be different. However, one thing caught me by surprise a little: the whole grandparent name thing. Everyone asks “What are you gonna “Go By”?

(OK…I need to post a disclaimer here. What you, my peers, are going to read in the thousand words +/- will likely be annoying to you. You may like me less. You may even print this and use it as birdcage liner. However, hear me out…)

First some soothing pictures:

Ok, are you ready, fellow grandparents? Here, I will just blurt it out:

It is OK to be a senior, to be getting older, and for the love of Sherman T Potter (!!!) to be called GRANDPA and GRANDMA.

I stumbled upon a 2018 article by Ashley Primis in the online version of Philadelphia Magazine today (LINK) and the writer said the following:

“So what’s so awful about Granny? Turns out the rejection of the traditional names has less to do with age denial (after all, these grandparents are beyond psyched to have grandkids) and more to do with a conventional image butting up against self-realization. They don’t see themselves the way they saw their grandparents. They have flair. “I just didn’t feel like ‘Grandma,’” says Lilian, a young progenitor of two who lives in Manayunk. “Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever feel like one of those, because to my mind, they’re the old ladies who get their hair done every week.” Lilian’s got a point: The grandmas I know have Amazon Prime accounts, take weekly spin classes, and are working well past retirement age. These aren’t the Mimis of yore. “For me, ‘grandma’ just seemed to conjure up images of sensible lace-up black oxfords and doily-covered furniture,” my mother-in-law explains in a text she follows up with a Bitmoji and is probably sent from one of her Grand Canyon hiking trips.”

I find myself identifying with the friend of NY Times writer Paula Span (Link). This is the exchange (added emphasis is mine) :

“What does Samantha call you?” I asked an old friend I don’t get to see often, over breakfast at a diner. I ask my peers that question a lot these days.

My friend, whose granddaughter is 11, rolled her eyes. “We didn’t realize we had to come up with anything more creative than Grandma and Grandpa,” she said. “So, that’s what we are.”“

The article goes on to say my sentiments exactly when it says “But here’s my deeper suspicion: However mightily my peers may pine for grandchildren and adore them when they arrive, some don’t want to acknowledge being old enough to be dubbed Grandpop or Granny.”

Friends…ok, wait. Here are some more pictures:

The bird has a seed! LOOK!!! Oh, and the bunny! 🙂 So cute:

OK. You ready? Are you softened up enough?

We are uncool.

There…I said it.

My article title snuck it the good news subliminally like retail powerhouse K-Mart would, in kind of a Blue Light Sale intercom message:

“Understanding Names: Coolness is Overrated, Obsolete, and Lamentable”

See what I did there?!?!

We are not cool. We are not hip. We have aged. We have gray, hidden perhaps, here and there and everywhere. We, collectively, “have a sciatica”, we grunt when we tie our shoes, and we occasionally fart on accident. Giving ourselves a name that sounds like a poorly-named 20-year-old doesn’t change that. Why not embrace our age? Longevity is a blessing by God, but it isn’t so we can stay young. Youth wasn’t wasted on the young…

Do the GiGis, the PawPaws, and the “G-dawg, Faux Pa or Grandude” crowd have “sensible lace-up black oxfords and doily-covered furniture” like grandma and grandpa did? No, probably not. However, they do have an over-reliance on email or basic texting (heck, we/they write their words out in a text completely!!!), they cling to their beloved Oxford comma, and they really shouldn’t wear those clothes they are trying to squeeze themselves into. (By the way, we also didn’t have a huge nest egg saved up like our grandparents likely did from making their own doilies.)

We need to embrace aging. We need to fight the stigma of aging NOT by making ourselves out to be a bad version of a young person, but by highlighting the tremendous blessings of aging. Need an example or two? We have experience. We have survived the “coming ice age”, oil “shortages”, hyperinflation (RIP poor Jimmy Carter), Y2K, the first Cold War, Acid rain, the end of the world in 2012, and many other things we were told would destroy humanity. Heck, we watched creepy clowns while we ate breakfast growing up before walking to school….and we did just fine. We have experience.

Another example of a blessing of aging: we knew our grandparents and saw what they did. Fault the Greatest Generation and Boomers if you want, but they built our current world physically. They beat the Nazis. They did big things and they did them well. I acknowledge that we always have to “eat the meat and spit out the bones” with any generation. They weren’t perfect. They were slow to consider the sin of racism, for one thing… However, we were fortunate to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of these amazing generations without the modern biases placed on them by those who weren’t alive like we were.

Another cool thing about our grandparents: They remember when churches were for worship, ordinances of the Church, and love and service to our members and their neighbors. They sang every verse of the old songs (!!!). They evangelized, they held fellow members to a high standard, and they loved the Lord. They would have ran out of town churches with pastors riding Harley’s down the aisle, with laser-light shows, and with songs that make Jesus out to be our boy/girlfriend. Church was serious and it was profoundly joyful, not the modern pull-my-finger slapstick. (Sorry to poke my finger in the eye of some of our current churches… Here is a penguin for self-soothing.)

Oh, and something else. Etymology Online reminds us that we what you choose as a name now won’t age that well anyway:

“1814, shortening of grandpappa (1753), childish or familiar form of grandfather (see grand- + pa). Grandpappa is recorded from 1753, grandpop from 1860, grandpappy from 1853.”

Like the lower back tattoos that seemed cute at the time, some of these names will seem pretty dumb later. Embrace age and its benefits and allow the youth to be the young ones. 🙂

One more thing to throw in there. Wait…first, a baby seal:

The last thought here since I have you good and upset. The grand baby isn’t ABOUT you or me. It is about our kids and their new family. 🙂 Focusing on what we will be called draws away from their joy and we have had a lifetime of things being about us anyway…we can share. 😉

So I submit to you…at the very least, there is nothing wrong with Grandma and Grandpa. Better yet, there is nothing wrong with aging gracefully. It is actually quite cool.

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Last: A picture of my beautiful grandbaby Genevieve Ann. I like calling her “Little G” and “Genie” too. 🙂

She is a gem. 🙂 I pray I have grown in wisdom in my 53 years to be what she needs in a grandpa. 🙂 I know my wife, Grandma Suz, has. 🙂

You can look me up on Facebook for a million more baby pictures. 🙂

Oh, and I fight to #EndALZ as much for her generation as the rest. 😉 Mom would have ADORED Little G!