My granddaughter, the new Tim Caton

By Ed Piper

My granddaughter, 2 1/2 years old, is like Tim Caton.

Tim Caton was the guy in P.E. who, infuriatingly for guys like me, could reel off 16 pull-ups when we went through testing.

I hated him.

Here, I, moving close to the 6'5" I have measured ever since I was 16, was grounded, looking up. One pull-up, two at most.

I had the body mass not matched to my arm strength.

P.E., where the long-time baseball player was just like everybody else or worse, due to my body size.

Caton had shorter, lighter legs. When he jumped up to the pull-up bar on the basketball courts next to the gym, he went immediately into his first pull-up and his seemingly unending string of pull-ups, with everybody else in class watching and the P.E. coach counting officially.

I, on the other hand, preferred no one watching me. Nothing to count.

My granddaughter, since before she reached two years old, could pull herself up, over, through stuff.

Violet's current daily feat is pulling her very compact body from the curb to the back door of Grandma's car--where the child seats are--over the gutter. From the curb to the lip of the door is quite a distance in comparison to her height and reach.

Yesterday it was climb onto Grandpa for coloring, back down to the floor when a marker fell to the floor, then pull herself up on Grandpa's lap using the table and his left leg for hold points. She did this over and over. I think she knocked the marker to the ground sometimes just to do her pull-up.

Of course, I love being the climbing structure. She's showing off her prowess, having fun, and we're doing something together.

She'll show that ol' Tim Caton some day. He's probably somewhere doing pull-ups right now.