Are negative ratings allowed?
I'm disinclined to divulge the gross and gory details of my dysfunctional parents, but suffice it to say that they weren't in the picture then, and they certainly aren't now. This is not due to a lack of effort on my part, but there comes a point that any rational person has to stop banging her head against the wall. They say that the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over and over and over and expect the same result. Therefore, I choose to NOT be insane.
At any rate, having said that, I was raised by my wonderful grandparents (on my father's side) from the age of two onward. While I remember very little about my grandmother Gigo (she passed away when I was nine years old, and yes, that was what I called her ... I can't for the life of me recall how the terminology happened), on the other hand, my grandfather ("Pop") raised me until I was sixteen years old; he passed away then.
I have very fond memories of him. I just wish he hadn't died so soon. There was so much that he wanted to see, that he never got to ... like when I graduated high school, or when I had my daughter. I know he would have been very happy. I regret the fact that I was an obnoxious, rebellious teenager when he died. I was so mean, spiteful, and hateful toward him, and it's the one thing in my life that I REALLY, TRULY regret ... not realizing at the time how much he really meant toward me, and NOT TELLING HIM. He went into the hospital one day, and just never came back. He was the type of person that NEVER complained about being sick, ever ... even when he was close to death, he never complained to me, not one time. He died twenty-three years ago and it still brings me close to tears to talk about him. (Proof yet again that we ARE NOT ROBOTS!)
Anyway, looking back on how he acted, and interacted, if I had to GUESS at his type I would probably guess that he was an ESTJ. He was VERY by-the-book, and had no problems calling people on the carpet if they were acting inappropriate, regardless of whether it was a private or a social setting. He was very respectful (and old-school!) when talking to other people, i.e., "yes ma'am", "yes sir", and so on. He was a supervisor (third-in command!) at the Pillsbury plant that used to be near here before he retired. Even AFTER he "retired", he owned apartment properties and maintained them HIMSELF, which meant cutting the grass, putting coal into the furnace late at night, doing repairs, etc. ... and this was when he was in his 70's !!! Never a complaint. However, he was always very popular with people; he had MANY friends (and many lady friends too, a few years after Gigo passed on!). He belonged to a lot of organizations; the one that immediately springs to mind is that he was a Freemason. I always knew that he was a Freemason in the back of my mind, but it never really hit home until his funeral. I had never seen so many Freemasons all at once in my entire life in one place.
A few years later, a man that I was dating (once he realized who my relatives were) had only good things to say about Pop; apparently he had worked as a dishwasher at one point in the Freemason kitchen and they fell behind. Well ... he told me that "some old man" had come back there to find out what was going on, and when he realized that they'd fallen behind, what did he do? Rolled up his sleeves and started washing dishes. It was only after the night was over did the ex realize that he'd been working alongside a Freemason all night doing dishes. He was extremely impressed and it just reinforced my belief that my Pop was a good person.
Congratulations if you made it to the end of my novel-sized post. Probably more than you all wanted to know about me, but the question was posed and I deemed it important to post this information.