Grandpa and the Go-Karts

My grandfather is eighty and has had a driver's license for sixty-four years without a single accident. He drives exactly the speed limit. Always. So I was shocked when he suggested we go to the go-kart track for my sixteenth birthday.

He climbed into his kart slowly, with some grunting. He buckled his helmet. He asked the teenager running the track how the brakes worked. Then the light turned green, and my grandfather became a completely different person.

He took the first turn like a Formula One driver. He bumped me into the hay bales. He passed my dad on the inside. He was laughing so hard I could hear him through his helmet.

He won all three races. When we climbed out, he took off his helmet, smoothed his white hair and said, "Well, that was nice." Then he drove us home at exactly the speed limit.