Watching TV With Opa

There was a period during the early '90s when my Opa lived with us at our house. Opa is the German word for "grandpa".

He worked during the day, but always brought my brother and I a candy bar from the convenience store every day on his way home. During the two or three-year period he lived with us, I don't think there was one day he didn't bring us a candy bar on his way home from work. He was a mechanic and worked at the Coca-Cola plant in Toronto. He would also bring us cases of pop because they were allowed to take them if the can was bent or defective in any way. We had fridge-fulls of defective cans.

My grandpa liked his TV. Because my brother and I were often forced to share the TV with him on weekday evenings, we had to watch the news and Jeopardy every night. On weekends, we watched re-runs of All in the Family and Three's Company by his request. But the one show we could all agree on was the Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show. I remember when I was a kid, there were two back-to-back episodes on every Saturday and Sunday afternoons. I think he laughed harder at the show than we did. His favorite characters were Bugs, Sylvester and the loudmouth Foghorn Leghorn, which he often referred to as a "weisenheimer".

My opa died in 2002. He moved out of our house probably a year prior to live in an apartment and collapsed in the parking lot one day after work. The funeral was very tough to get through and I still miss him to this day. He was a hard-working man and left everything to my brother and I and our cousins. He was a very great guy who liked his cartoons.