Home of Duke U.

Today has been a busy day. I got up and went to yoga this morning, came home afterward, showered, met up with some friends for lunch, went to my sister's tumbling meet just in time to see her compete, went out with another friend for Frostys, and talked on the phone with the summer camp director. After so much people time, I decided what I needed the most was a little while to just give in to my introvertedness, so I grabbed the book I've been unable to finish for months and nestled into the couch to read. I'd been reading for a while when my phone started ringing. I did not want to get off the couch to answer it, but I am SO glad that I did.

It was Grandmother. After asking how I was and if I was busy, she said, "I called because I have an important question for you."

"Ok," I replied having NO idea what might be coming.

"Your Poppie is working a crossword puzzle and he can't figure out the answer to one of the clues. I already tried calling your mom and your sister, but neither of them would answer."

I laughed, "Alright... I'll see if I can help."

"Ok. The clue is 'Home of Duke U.'"

'I've totally got this one!' I thought, congratulating myself on my basic knowledge of my alma mater's greatest rival. (Go Heels!) "That would be Durham. D-u-r-h-a-m," I answered smugly. I listened as Grandmother repeated the letters to Poppie.

"Durham?" I heard Poppie reply. "That doesn't work. The answer is four letters long!"

'Defeated.'  my inner dialogue whispered to me. I thought and thought and could not come up with a four letter word that would answer that clue! "Duke is in Durham, I promise. I just don't know what it could be... let me ask Seth."

So we went through the whole process with Seth. He Googled it, but we found nothing.

"I thought you college educated people were supposed to be smart!" Grandmother said, laughing at all of us for getting so worked up over a stupid crossword puzzle. The truth was, she was as worked up as any of us.

We laughed together and said goodbye, promising to call each other if one of us figured it out. Seth and I couldn't let it go. He looked up the crossword puzzles for the newspaper they get in Kentucky hoping to see that Poppie had maybe been looking at the wrong answer spaces. Not knowing the date of the puzzle, we were at a dead end there unless I called again and found out. Meanwhile, I looked up a crossword dictionary online. After searching for 'Duke,' I thought I had figured out that the answer was "DORM." That makes sense, I thought, so I called Grandmother back.

Poppie had apparently given up on the puzzle and moved on to doing something else, but after I told Grandmother my supposed answer, she said she had thought of that, but not said it, and she called Poppie back into the living room. "Could it be dorm?" she asked.

I heard him mumble in the background and then say that the other letters he had put an 'N' as the first letter. "I guess try "NCAR" for North Carolina," I suggested. (Seth had already thought of this.)

"That's EXACTLY right," I heard Poppie yelling from the background.

"But what does the R stand for?" Grandmother asked.

"NCAR.. like N for North and C-A-R for CARolina," I replied.

Then things just went crazy. Grandmother was laughing, I was laughing, Poppie was yelling at us from the background, and Seth was sitting dejected because I still hadn't figured out the date of the puzzle on which Poppie was working. Then I heard Poppie yell something like, "You're smarter than a (something unintelligible) in a sandbox!"

"I don't even know what that means," I replied.

We exchanged "I love you's" again and got off the phone.

"When we're old, can we call our grandchildren about answers to crossword puzzles?" I asked, putting my arms around Seth's shoulders.

"Yeah... but they'll just tell us to search for it ourselves," he answered.

He's probably right... but for me... those phone calls made my whole day.