Nice Old Grandpa Likes to Yodel
By Donal Mahoney


Nice old Grandpa likes to yodel
whenever he recalls the boys who
beat him up in third grade.

After sixty years, Grandpa finds them
on the Internet and takes a plane
and visits them, wherever they may be.

The beatings he absorbed, walking
home from school, Grandpa can't forget.
He keeps a list of all the boys who

bludgeoned him because he wore
Coke-bottle glasses with wire frames.
When nice old Grandpa lands, he finds

some old classmates dying in hospice,
others drooling in nursing homes,
and a few like him still on their own.

He sees terror dancing in their eyes
when he announces, "Rudy's here!
Remember half-blind Rudy in third grade,

the kid you thrashed for wearing glasses?"
He lets them know he wears contacts now
and he's there to rectify their wrongs.

Then Grandpa begins to yodel long and loud
and a security guard curses and drags him away.
The aggrieved always press charges but

no judge has ever sent Grandpa away.
He pays a decent fine but otherwise
nice old Grandpa gets probation.


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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.