(no subject)
Gramma’s Busy
It’s hard to resist feeling lonely here in Bakersfieldtownsburgvillestonshire. I don’t have any friends here, since I am clearly too fit and have too many of my original teeth for this to be my hometown, and I haven’t made new ones that haven’t recently left for school. With nowhere to meet people but the gym and the grocery store, I’m left friendless - I’ll pass on knowing Larry the surly bagboy at Save Mart, and if I wanted to hang around the lumbering golems with crewcuts in the gym, I’d invest in a haunted laboratory, sew pieces of corpse together, and harness the elemental power of the heavens to reanimate them myself.
Sitting here by myself for most of the day, however, has me lamenting my solitude - I have no social life to speak of, and even my antisocial life is sparse. So I decided to pick up the phone and call the only person whose life is less interesting than my own.
Gramma.
My gram-gram, bless her dear heart, is old, older than the dirt that clustered to form planet Earth. I love her, not only because she’s a batty old German woman but because she always makes me realize how much more I have going on in life than her. A typical call usually involves her describing her various ailments for ten or so minutes, and then telling me who around her died recently.
“Oh, Christopher,” she says, “it’s been so long since I’ve heard from you. Well, you know I can’t see out of my left eye, what with the macular degeneration, but now the right eye is going… so, you remember my friend Merciel from upstairs? Well, she’s dead now - yup, she kicked the bucket, and so is that other lady who lived nearby, so I just stay inside and listen to my Celine Dion. I just love her!”
So I figured, hey, I’m down on myself right now, she’s just the sort of pick-me-up I need to make myself feel less miserable. So I dialed her up.
“Oh, Christopher! I know, it’s been so long since you’ve heard from me. I just love this new senior center I’m living in now.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been out to visit…”
“That’s fine! I hardly have time anymore. I’d love to see you, though! Just don’t come on a Friday, because that’s social night, and me and the girls go downstairs. But Saturday is fine! Well, not in the mornings or later afternoons, but if you call me between 12:30 and 2:00, I should be free!”
“Wow, gramma, you sound like you’ve been active late-”
“Can you hold on, Christopher? I’m getting a beep. Actually, can I just call you back? I think it’s a friend of mine, we’re gonna go to the mall.”
Like, what exactly am I supposed to do, now that my grandmother has more going on in her December years than I have currently? Since when do I need to pencil in a visit to her? What sort of teenage nightmare is this? Goddammit, and my eyes still work!
Grandmothers have two jobs: baking cookies and sending me $5 in my birthday cards with a note saying “Don’t tell that I gave you this extra money. Buy some pants without holes in them!!!! Love Gramma,” as if I could head over to the $5 pant emporium and be completely set. In no way do call waiting and day-planners fit into the intelligent design of how grandmothers ought to work.
First thing tomorrow, I’ll have my people send her people a little memo and make sure she’s simpatico on how we’re running this operation - she bakes and listens to Celine Dion, and I am the one who goes out with friends, not she. Not she.
I just hope she has time to get back to me about it.
It’s hard to resist feeling lonely here in Bakersfieldtownsburgvillestonshire. I don’t have any friends here, since I am clearly too fit and have too many of my original teeth for this to be my hometown, and I haven’t made new ones that haven’t recently left for school. With nowhere to meet people but the gym and the grocery store, I’m left friendless - I’ll pass on knowing Larry the surly bagboy at Save Mart, and if I wanted to hang around the lumbering golems with crewcuts in the gym, I’d invest in a haunted laboratory, sew pieces of corpse together, and harness the elemental power of the heavens to reanimate them myself.
Sitting here by myself for most of the day, however, has me lamenting my solitude - I have no social life to speak of, and even my antisocial life is sparse. So I decided to pick up the phone and call the only person whose life is less interesting than my own.
Gramma.
My gram-gram, bless her dear heart, is old, older than the dirt that clustered to form planet Earth. I love her, not only because she’s a batty old German woman but because she always makes me realize how much more I have going on in life than her. A typical call usually involves her describing her various ailments for ten or so minutes, and then telling me who around her died recently.
“Oh, Christopher,” she says, “it’s been so long since I’ve heard from you. Well, you know I can’t see out of my left eye, what with the macular degeneration, but now the right eye is going… so, you remember my friend Merciel from upstairs? Well, she’s dead now - yup, she kicked the bucket, and so is that other lady who lived nearby, so I just stay inside and listen to my Celine Dion. I just love her!”
So I figured, hey, I’m down on myself right now, she’s just the sort of pick-me-up I need to make myself feel less miserable. So I dialed her up.
“Oh, Christopher! I know, it’s been so long since you’ve heard from me. I just love this new senior center I’m living in now.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been out to visit…”
“That’s fine! I hardly have time anymore. I’d love to see you, though! Just don’t come on a Friday, because that’s social night, and me and the girls go downstairs. But Saturday is fine! Well, not in the mornings or later afternoons, but if you call me between 12:30 and 2:00, I should be free!”
“Wow, gramma, you sound like you’ve been active late-”
“Can you hold on, Christopher? I’m getting a beep. Actually, can I just call you back? I think it’s a friend of mine, we’re gonna go to the mall.”
Like, what exactly am I supposed to do, now that my grandmother has more going on in her December years than I have currently? Since when do I need to pencil in a visit to her? What sort of teenage nightmare is this? Goddammit, and my eyes still work!
Grandmothers have two jobs: baking cookies and sending me $5 in my birthday cards with a note saying “Don’t tell that I gave you this extra money. Buy some pants without holes in them!!!! Love Gramma,” as if I could head over to the $5 pant emporium and be completely set. In no way do call waiting and day-planners fit into the intelligent design of how grandmothers ought to work.
First thing tomorrow, I’ll have my people send her people a little memo and make sure she’s simpatico on how we’re running this operation - she bakes and listens to Celine Dion, and I am the one who goes out with friends, not she. Not she.
I just hope she has time to get back to me about it.