Grandpa loved to tell us
the story of his childhood,
a boy in Britain,
always in trouble
with the nuns who scolded,
Grow up, they’d snap.
No, he’d grin, not yet.
The boys’ bathroom stood
half-destroyed,
renovations underway
so off to the girls’ he went,
and there he saw
what the boys never had:
doors on the stalls.
Why no doors for us?
he asked the nun.
Boys don’t need doors,
she answered curtly.
But he thought otherwise.
The next day, a scream
they rushed to the girls’ room,
no doors in sight.
Dragged to the office,
he faced their fury.
Where are they?
Not with me
They searched his home
top to bottom,
no trace,
no doors.
They bought new ones,
installed them fresh,
and by morning
gone again.
This became the rhythm:
new doors,
missing doors,
nuns at his house,
coming up empty.
At last,
new doors arrived,
but this time
they went first
to the boys’ bathroom.
By morning,
all doors remained.
Still, the nuns watched him,
narrow-eyed,
knowing,
though proof eluded them.
And he,
with that sly grin,
held the truth:
Each night,
he had unscrewed them,
quiet as a whisper,
stacked them high
in the attic above the garage,
where no one thought to look.
His parents?
They never said a word.
And then,
one day,
the nuns stormed into the office for work
there on the desk,
every last door that had been missing
and a note atop:
That wasn’t so hard.
I remember that story
because he’s not here to tell it now.
So I tell it
to family, to friends,
to anyone who’ll listen.
A small act of mischief,
a spark of defiance,
a lesson passed down:
how to shape the world
with laughter,
how to carry stories
and make them live again.