How to Know if you are an "Over the Top" Grandparent

All of us have run into grandparents all too eager to show us pictures, slides, jpegs and endless other representations of their grandchildren. While these pictures are immensely interesting to the grandparents themselves, they can prove to be a "real snoozer" for the casual participant (trapped victim).

Here are ten ways to know if you have become the slightly obnoxious, (okay, at times really obnoxious) "Over the Top" Grandparent:

1)  You hold up traffic at busy intersections trying to interest the driver in the next lane with pictures of your grandchild's first visit to Santa (and it's now August).

2)  You buy a new black suit, take it to Walgreen's, and have the photo department burn a life-size picture on the suit jacket of the delivery room nurse holding up your first grandchild seconds after birth (no need to wear a tie -- the umbilical cord does the trick).

3)  You have a billboard installed in your front yard with a picture of you and your grandchild -- rotating spotlights are used to highlight dimples.

4)  Crime drops in your area as even would-be intruders are afraid of being confronted in the middle of the night with your accordion-like string of wallet-sized pictures of the twins.

5)  You have pay extra for the three vanity license plates on the back of your car that combined read, "IM GREATST GRANDPRT IN WRLD W/ QUTEST GRANDCHLD EVR IN HISTRY OF WORLD -- HONK IF U'D LIKE TO C PICHURES."

6)  You try making the same face your little niece does when she eats oatmeal to the nice highways patrolman who pulled you over. He reaches for the handcuffs.

7)  You are hired by the Sleep Insomnia Clinic to cure patients by endlessly talking about sweet Janey's first music recital and how her mother also played the piano when she was just that age (you have a 100% success rate within 10 minutes).

8)  Waterboarding is no longer needed at Guantanomo Bay to extract information, rather interrogators simply pipe in (non-stop) video and audio recordings of little Suzy's first year of practicing the saxophone (everyone eventually breaks).

9)  Several hospitals are able to cut the amount of anesthesia needed to put patients "under" before surgery by hiring you to stand next to the operating table and recite over and over all the cute little things your grand daughter said to you on the phone last week (belly-laughing at them all). Like magic patients lapse into deep unconsciousness.

10) You invent a code that foreign nations cannot break based on the adorable little names your adorable little grandchildren call you (...grinpappa calling grandmeow...please send secret formula to grampooza from pappaw....do you copy?)