Today would have been my grandfather's 94th birthday. He got ALS (Lou Gerhig's Disease) and passed away 15 years ago. I've been wearing his ring ever since.
Everytime he visited us in Brooklyn, he complained about the parking. It didn't help that he was driving this huge boat... a '91 Mercury Grand Marquis.
We used to play demolition derby with Lego vehicles on his kitchen table, rolling the cars from one side of the table to the other. My grandmother would yell at is when the cars fell off the table and smashed on their new marble floor.
He helped me build (mostly built) a science project I'd been eyeing for years in a World Book encyclopedia--a demonstration of how a dam works.
He would play that slight of hand game when you pull apart a finger--except that he was missing the tip of his index finger so it was super realistic when he did it.
When he couldn't hold a tissue up to his nose anymore after he got sick, I would hold it up for him. He'd get annoyed if I squeezed, because you can't blow your nose when your nostrils are squeezed shut.
We'd make pizza together. Half the mozzerella went on the pizza, half was kept aside for testing.
He loved marzipan like I do.
He had the heaviest steps ever, but always did jumping jacks and other exercises in the morning in his room. I never saw him do it, but the whole house would shake.
He couldn't hear well, so when you got in an argument with him sometimes he'd say, "I hear what you're saying, but you don't really know what you're talking about." He didn't hear you, and it didn't matter, he was right.
The few times we actually got him on video (because he always took all our videos), it was usually of his feet, because my grandmother didn't know what she was doing when she took pictures. "Lee! Is it on, Lee? How do I know if its on?"