It’s hard to go anywhere on the internet without seeing memes. They’ve taken over much of our lives, and are a huge part of how we communicate now.
A little image, a quick edit, or a phrase repeated again and again can all be memes.
The impact on how they communicate ideas is huge. As famously stated in a certain 2013 video game, memes are the DNA of the soul.
But not everyone is as in-touch with meme culture as young people. Though we all know some older relatives who certainly try. Like David here!
Also known as “Pawpaw” to his family, David took babysitting duty when his grandson’s parents went on vacation. Grandparents are the few people you can trust to watch the little ones when you need to leave. That’s just a fact.
His grandson is 8-month-old Ty Waterhouse.
David was ready to make Ty’s stay at grandpa’s the most fun thing the baby might not even remember.
Ty’s family is a military family. They were stationed at Fort Knox, where David had to fly to from Dallas. But distance doesn’t matter when you have family to look after.
And that’s especially true for the littlest members of a family. David wanted to send his daughter and her husband some updates on the two of them.
He turned to using memes, which he made in adorable grandpa style.
He’d print out the captions on paper and photograph Ty next to them.
His daughter, Stephanie Waterhouse, adored the images he took of her son. She called them “Memes by PawPaw”. They’re a great example of how our elders often just want to relate to us, and that can mean the same jokes and hobbies we have.
“Memes by PawPaw’ are a grandson and grandfather’s way of communicating with the parents.
For instance, Ty is in one photo with a message saying “There is a small dent in the Mustang. It won’t cost too much to fix”.
Stephanie told Good Morning America how Pawpaw’s way of bonding with Ty made her feel.
“Memes by Pawpaw surprised us in that my dad had thought this out before he even flew up to Kentucky. He printed the notes at home because he knew he wouldn’t be able to figure out how to print them at our house. But once he started sending them, it doesn’t surprise us because he’s very funny like that.”
She tells us that her dad is not a modern tech-savvy person at all.
He is perfectly content living in the early 2000s, which makes some forms of communication with him a bit funny.
“He refuses to get a smart phone and is very proud of his flip phone without internet. I once emailed him and asked for a shrimp scampi recipe. He couldn’t find it so he printed out similar recipes, scanned them in, and then emailed me the scanned recipe. He had no idea he could just copy the URL.”
Ty had a blast with grandpa, judging from the memes from him.
They partied and watched Sesame Street, and went spotting for cool cars. Ty took a particular liking to a red Jeep.
But just because he’s out of touch with modern devices doesn’t mean he’s clueless when it comes to technology. David was rather computer-savvy back in his day. He just sees little reason to give smartphones the same attention.
“My dad is a recently retired Dallas Police Officer. He was actually the person who created the database that tracked homicide information for the Dallas Police Department. The FBI took his idea and modeled one of their national databases after the one he created.” – said Stephanie
When Ty grows up and see these pictures, he’s going to love them. Not everyone gets to star in memes or go viral in a news story, especially not as babies.
Check out the short video about Pawpaw David and his grandson Ty below. Please share this article too!
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