One of the God-Awful things about getting older is the dreaded Colonoscopy or as I call it, the "up-your-butt-a-recto my". You guessed it, my time has come and gone but I got another clean bill of health.
However when I go through those exams I always remember my grandpa. Grandma called him "Grandpa Grunt". He came by the nickname naturally enough by spending hours on the pot grunting.
In his later years, his whole life was eating, preparing to poop and then grunting for hours until he did.
In fact he made so much noise that grandma made him build an outhouse in the forest behind their house. Because he was ornery he only built the bench and he put it where grandma could see him from the kitchen window. She could barely hear him but when she looked out the window there he was in all his glory setting on the bench with both hands and both feet pushing down as hard as he could to give him leverage to complete his mission. In those days they did not know about Diverticulitis or as I like to call it "Diver-balloon-i-osis". Little balloons are formed in the intestine walls from pushing extra hard to create a bowel movement. Grandpa had never been told that he could cause this problem so he continued to eat and push. I believe he pushed so hard for so long that he created balloons in his stomach big enough to cause him to levitate. That's right, he would levitate. He would be grunting and pushing there on his bench and all of the sudden he would rise up into the air and then he would settle back down on the bench to complete his mission. I think he was to embarrassed to tell anyone about it but grandma would see him go up and say, “Grandpa has to stand half way up to complete his duty" She thought his feet were still on the ground but they weren't, he was levitating. It was obvious that some combination of the food he was eating created gases. The balloon pockets got big enough to hold enough gas to make him rise or as I said, he would levitate.
On the day after the Thanksgiving of 19 and 26 grandpa was having more trouble than usual and his grunts became actual screams. He was pushing so hard and creating so much gas that he began to levitate but this time he didn't come back down. He just kept going up. A half naked man levitated into the air and disappeared over the horizon. We never saw grandpa again. No one knows where he ended up or what happened to him. Grandma heard his screams and looked out the window just in time to see him disappear over the horizon. She believed the Angels came and took him away. I believe he rose so high that the balloons in his stomach exploded and he became fertilizer for some farmer’s field. However, that is just my theory.
