Parenting

The Internet Is Loving This Grandpa’s Reaction To Someone Offering Him A Subway Seat

by Mike Julianelle
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
Image via Twitter

A grandpa showed off his upper body strength on the subway and the internet is crushing hard

Age ain’t nothing but a number… that indicates how many people have swiped right on your Tinder profile. Because that’s what’s been happening to 68-year-old dentist Wayne McEntire after his grandson tweeted out a picture of his gold-medal performance on the subway last week. (Provided he has a Tinder account.)

On Thursday, McEntire was riding a subway in Rio, where he’s attending his fifth straight Olympic games with his 19-year-old grandson and probable-boy-band-member-based-on-his-name, Britton Barker, and he attracted a fair amount of attention when he showed off his own athletic prowess.

According to Buzzfeed, when a passenger saw the dapperly-dressed cottontop and offered him one of the train car’s elderly-accessible spots. Rather than accept, McEntire instead grabbed the subway pole with both hands and proceeded to lift his body up, horizontally, and stay there. To the passenger’s, and his grandson’s, amusement.

“With no hesitation, he grabbed the pole and hoisted himself up with ease,” said Britton’s brother, Barrett Barker (It’s boy-band city up in the Barker’s household!)

Grandpas ride subways every day. Believe me, I often offer them my seat. But I’ve never seen one react the way McEntire did.

Apparently, Gramps is a regular card, and bit of a gym rat – working out with lighter weights but more repetitions so as to protect his joints – and actions like this one aren’t out-of-the-ordinary.

“He’s always been one to put on a show and entertain me and my two brothers,” he said. “So I knew he had something that would surely surprise me in store just by the way I saw him walk over to the empty seat.”

Britton proceeded to share his grandpa’s feat with Twitter, and the reaction has been enthusiastic. The tweet has garnered 96K retweets and 126K likes since Thursday. The Barker brothers may not have been surprised, but the internet sure was. Surprised and turned-on, it seems.

My grandfather was the life of the party, and a sprightly dude well into his 80s, but I never saw him do something like this, and thank god I didn’t, because this summer has been a lost one for me, gym wise, and the last thing I need is some geriatric stud to show me up in front of the entire internet.

But Wayne McEntire gives me hope that when I’m in my late-sixties, I don’t have to simply resort to a life of blissed-out heroin addiction. No, instead, I can keep myself in shape, put myself out there with a well-timed social media stunt (and hopefully some social-media-savvy grandkids to help me post it), and wait for the ladies to come running.

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