My grandparents’ house had an enclosed front porch that would get really hot in the summer if the windows weren’t open. One day when I was around 17, my mom and I were leaving and Gram picked up a candle she had out there which had melted until it was bent over almost double and said, “This reminds me of your grandfather!” I was in hysterics and my mom, who was already out of earshot, wanted to know what was so funny. She was mortified when I told her.
I’m sorry, this is one of those things that starts out kind of “eh?” and gets funnier every time you read it. Now I am actually laughing over it. I can just see his indignation and shock - the little shit actually believed me over it? What kind of son did I raise!
Oh, this reminds me.
My MIL died last year. My FIL took it *very *hard (MIL was the love of his life, they’d been married 60+ years, and I don’t think they’d ever even *dated *anyone besides each other). While he was still trying to wrap his brain around the horrible truth that she was gone, he told the story of how they decided to get married on fairly short notice:
They’d decided fairly early in their relationship that they wanted to get married, but they’d agreed to put it off for a few years until they were done with school and established in their respective professions. Shortly before the agreed-upon wedding date, they had the opportunity to get married at City Hall. They took advantage of this since it was a great way to avoid the fancy wedding they’d been dreading. After they broke the news to their families, my FIL’s brother asked my MIL if they’d gotten married early because she was pregnant.
FIL is *still *offended by this. He explained, “We deliberately avoided doing *that *before we were married because we knew pregnancy would screw up MIL’s education!”
The notion that MIL and FIL were doing *anything *of the sort, including “everything but,” is just kind of stomach-churning.
“Grandma, you heard that Sister is in France for a couple weeks, right?”
“Oh yes, for her job, right?”
“Yep. Well, she wanted me to ask you if you wanted her to bring you anything back - any chocolate or little souvenirs or anything like that.”
“Oh, sure. See if she can bring me back a nice young Frenchman. Make sure he’s handsome.”
For context: this was about two months before Grandma’s 89th birthday, and her husband died about thirty years ago.
I remembered another gem from my mom: She’d just made a big tray of deviled eggs for a party.
Mom: I don’t need to put these eggs in the fridge, do I?
Me: Dunno. When’s the party?
Mom: Oh, not for several more hours…
Me: :eek: Yes! Put them in the fridge!
Mom: Why? Eggs aren’t meat, are they?
Me: Well, they ain’t fruit!
Moral of the story: never eat at my parents’ house.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
I don’t know about cleaning teeth, but they’re pretty much just very very dry. (I was at camp coordinating a game that for some reason used dog biscuits and I was hungry.)
I’m a gal, actually. Who went on to steam-iron a skirt while wearing it. So yeah, my folks had no illusions about me. baw haw!
My paternal grandfather once referred to my (at the time) extremely curly hair as “steel wool.” Thanks, grandpa.
He also used to replace random words in storybooks with “peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
Having that kind of TMI can be useful, though… turns out that both my mother and her mother are much, much more squicked out by the notion of anal than by homosexuality per se. Being able to point out that (according to conversations in the Dope, which admittedly is not a peer-reviewed journal) lots of homosexual couples of both genders do “the same things Grandma and Gramps did before getting married” got them both moved from “YUCK!” to “support gay rights”.
My paternal grandmother had three aunts (does this make them my great-great aunts? I never know about these things) who were fantastic, booze ol Irish broads. They all lived to be in their late 90s and carried on wildly until the end. Oh the stories I could tell.
Your comment reminded me of an encounter I had with one of them at a wedding reception.
Her: Oh helloooooo (boozy breath in my face)
Me: Hi Aunt Mary!
Her: You look soooooooo beauuuutiful. Youuuuu doooo.
Me: Thank you.
Her: You know who you look like? You look like a young Elizabeth Taylor!
Me: :: blink blink:: Thank you!
Elizabeth Taylor: Breathtakingly beautiful, dark haired, fair skinned, gorgeous violet eyes. Cute, pert nose.
Me: Average looking, blonde haired, serious tan at the time, and green eyes. Big italian nose.
Ah well, we’re both short!
You posted a pic once. You are NOT average looking at all. Way above!
Btw, you need to get a pic to the Gallery.
You know the ‘‘crazy people wear tinfoil hats’’ meme? According to my mother and grandmother, my uncle did this when he was about 19 and had his first psychotic break. He was sitting with them at the kitchen table, complaining that aliens were shooting ‘‘microwave beams’’ into his head. They thought he was just kidding around since he was a big sci-fi geek, but he jumped up, grabbed a roll of tinfoil and constructed a hat to deflect the beams, then ran outside screaming.
There were clues until that point that he wasn’t exactly playing with a full deck, but that one sealed it.
I think most of the comedic value in my family comes from my uncle. He once complained to me that someone had laced his Bengals cassette tape with LSD. And people are always sneaking into his house and putting stuff in his cigarettes – my favorite of all the weird substances he reported was cheesecake.
My husband’s family also has some serious eccentricities. (They are really wealthy, so you can’t call them crazy.) When his grandfather turned 75, they threw a party of roughly 150 people, and decided to go with a circus theme. This is only ridiculous because they always throw these lavish luxury parties where everyone has to dress up in tuxes and evening gowns. It was… the fanciest circus-themed party I’d ever been to. Dinner was catered with the finest brightly colored china with polka-dotted cloth napkins. There were huge crystal centerpieces in the middle of the table, which they filled with popcorn.
When we were done eating, they pulled one of the walls away from the dining room to reveal a large entertainment area in keeping with the circus theme. They had an arcade, a rack of clown costumes and clown makeup artists as well as unicyclists and jugglers. We spent the entire evening being pressured to dress up as clowns. I think the highlight of the whole affair was when my husband’s elderly grandmother, in full clown regalia, got in front of the live jazz band and delivered a soul-crushingly off-key rendition of Sinatra’s ‘‘Night and Day’’ to her beloved husband.
It was the sort of experience where you had to pinch yourself to ensure it’s real.
My Great-Grandfather was an immigrant from Sweden/Norway (they split, about the time he came to the US).
He said that according to an old family story, we were decended from a Troll Wife that married a Human. Now Scandanavian Trolls got tails, & he said the story was true. Because, according to him, I was born with a tail, & the doctor cut it off.
My grandfather was, probably, the king of this kind of thing.
I think the current iconic tale of the family is when he—I don’t know how the conversation got turned to the topic, and maybe no one else remembers—ended up describing what a Capon was, and how they were created. Complete with the tool used to do it—which he produced, right then, from the pocket of his ever-present hunting vest.
At the dinner table.
On thanksgiving.
That’s one of the stories we told at his memorial service, three years ago.
My mother was dying of bladder cancer. She weighed all of seventy-five pounds and was doped to the gills but she still insisted upon getting up and using the bathroom in her room until the very end.
She had been a lifelong teacher and was a determined and strong-willed person. She intended to dance her swan song exactly the way she chose and I wanted to support her in that.
But I dreaded her frequent requests for help to go to the bathroom. It was painful for her and, in my care to assist her, also physicallly painful for my back.
On our last walk, both of us wincing, inching along, she suddenly paused and held up her index finger. She took a long breath and I paused anticipating one of her “teacherisms.” She was going to tell me something of import - one of those things I would remember after she was gone.
She opened her mouth and, with a twinkle in her watering eye, said,
“As the day grows longer
The pee gets stronger.”
Silence.
Then we both broke into such raucous laughter punctuated with little groans and murmurs of pain that the nurse had to peek her head in the door to see what was going on.
Longfellow you weren’t, my tough little Mom.
Spending time with people who are in decline can be a hoot. And that’s a good thing, right? Cuz if you didn’t laugh. . .
All four of our parents became Grandpa Simpsons in their last few years and the combination of increasing confusion and difficulty hearing created many meal-time situations that had the rest of us staring blankly at the walls or ceiling to keep from making eye contact and losing it.
We took my parents to a very nice restaurant and in the middle of the meal my father announced appropos of nothing and loud enough for all the diners to hear,
“You have to drink a lot of cranberry juice every day. It’s good for your urine.”
Snorted in my napkin, I did. Twice.
My grandpa always told me to eat kraut because it would put hair on my chest. Why he thought a girl would want hair on her chest is beyond me.