Forget Kim Kardashian’s badonkadonk, which we’ve all seen a million times now. An Oklahoma college student and her sweet papaw almost broke Twitter March 16.
Kelsey Harmon is a softball player and student at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah.
Harmon’s tweet featured a photo of her sad grandfather eating one of the burgers he made for his grandchildren with the caption “dinner with papaw tonight… (heart emoji) he made 12 burgers for all 6 grandkids and I’m the only one who showed. (crying emoji) love him.”
Harmon’s sad papaw snap soon went viral and she received thousands of tweets and messages. Some were rude, but most were heartfelt statements about how important family should be to everyone and how people missed their grandparents.
Even Montel Williams sent love to Harmon and her grandfather, saying “Tell pawpaw Hi from me.”
It even inspired a hashtag, #WeWantPawpaw, from fans asking Ellen DeGeneres to invite him to her talk show.
People started making papaw memes. One featured a cutout from Harmon’s photo and said, “Papaw. Amazing burger chef. The Internet’s grandpa.”
One of Harmon’s cousins wasn’t so lucky.
“Papaw is ok guys I promise & he loves all grandkids equally, plz stop sending my cousins death threats everything is ok !!!!” Harmon tweeted March 17.
Brock Harmon made up for his absence by visiting March 17 and having a belated burger dinner with him.
“GUYS DON’T WORRY!!!! I CAME TO PAPAWS HOUSE AND AM HAVING A BURGER!!!!!!!” he tweeted along with a photo.
Some people still weren’t impressed.
“They are cold and old now, too late,” @hadidgomez replied.
March 17, Kelsey Harmon sent out a note thanking everyone for their nice and sometimes sad responses. She expressed appreciation for and respectfully turned down offers of gifts or donations. She ended the note by saying she never intended to become famous or get any attention and said, “Papaw is great. Please know he is loved deeply, and now widely.”
At press time, Harmon’s original tweet had 290,000 likes and had been retweeted 180,000 times.
Print headline: Poor papaw
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2016.