I’m sitting here with my maternal grandmother, she’s down visiting while mom was in the hospital and now with us for a few weeks. Well she’s having some back pain and I was offering to do anything she needed and she talked about how a doctor had her take muscle relaxers:
“So I took the muscle relaxers and I WENT ON A TRIP! I mean, it was fun and I would do it again, except I don’t want to get addicted.”
Ahhhh good times. Drug use and grandma, recipe for fun!
– IG
That’s pretty funny.
My sister cracked me up the other day, as I was telling her about some of the drug products the company I work for makes. We are a major supplier of generic narcotics and other controlled substances, such as morphine, fentanyl, oxycodone, hydromorphone, etc.
She says “Hydromorphone! I know that one! Dilaudid!” She had to take it when she was in the hospital with pancreitis. She goes on to say…
“Now, I don’t have an addictive personality, but DAMN I’d do that again!”
Yeah, my dad had to use some pain medication at some point, and commented, “I see why these are illegal. This is just a bit too fun.”
My girlfriend’s straight-laced grandma and I were having dinner…
A bit of food dropped onto my, um, chest…
Granny says, “Honey, if you’d stop feeding those things, they’d quit growing!”
I thought I would fall over laughing so hard.
Hmmm. The laughable things my grandmother used to say never reflected particularly well on her. For example, we were driving down the road one day and she was talking about some acquaintances of hers. Then she uttered this classic: “They’re Jewish.” [Pause] “Of course we don’t **think ** of them as Jewish.”
Huh. My grandma just harps on me about my weight (not nearly that bad) and why-oh-why-did-I-change-my-major-and-give-up-on-vet-school?
I feel like I’ve been cheated.
My lovable Ukrainian nanny had a bit of a freak out when I was 14. Some might remember the story of the kid who bought a powerful cross bow on the internet and used it to shoot his ex-girlfriend. She lived etc. but my nanna sat me down and gave me a short, convoluted talk on not being serious with boys because they can go crazy sometimes.
More recently was the question; “are you and your boyfriend serious?” (actually it came out as “You and Jeremy - You not serious?”
Um, Nan - I’m 17. No, no we’re not.
My maternal grandma, upon hearing that I needed orthodontia, told me to just press on my teeth with my fingers while I was watching TV at night, and that would push them into place without all the expense.
My paternal grandmother once told my youngest aunt, her daughter, to “Be careful with that BIG KNIFE!” My aunt was about 18 at the time. Years later, Grandma was senile and totally out of it, but we gathered for her birthday at the nursing home. Guess who (now in her mid-40s) picked up the knife to cut the cake, and guess what Grandma had to say about it?
But my favorite grandma quote is from the lady who lived next door since I was 2 years old. No relation at all, but my sister and I called her and her husband Grandma and Grandpa ever since we could remember (the blood grandparents lived out of town). Little old Catholic lady, said the rosary every day, member of the Legion of Mary. One day Grandma was discussing a girl my age who lived around the corner: “Oh yes, that one who thinks her shit’s good to eat.” <snort>
She’s long gone, but that phrase lives on in my vocabulary.
My grandmother is exactly the same way, except about non-Jewish people. I once had a friend over for dinner, and towards the end of the meal my grandmother turns to my mother and asks “Emily’s friend isn’t Jewish, is he?” while he was still sitting there!
My Gram had a bunch of nonsensical, odd sayings. We were at a restaurant and the woman at the next table was telling off her husband for some transgression or other and when she was finished, Gram said, “Well, I guess she told him where the bear shit in the woods.” Whaaaaa? Another of hers which I think meant essentially the same thing was “Boy, she sure told him who tied the kittens.” 
I loved my Gram.
My maternal Grandmother was pretty fiesty. If you were wearing something she didn’t like, she inform you that “I wouldn’t walk across the street to watch a dog fight in that thing”.
She used to hit me in the head with a fly swatter when I was little, always claiming that “A fly was just there a minute ago”.
Speaking of Grandmothers, I worked at a place where the owner’s wife was the most stereotypical-white haired-elderly and kind-to-all women that I’d ever seen.
We were discussing a former employee who’d made a lot of trouble for her and her husband.
“I wouldn’t piss up his ass if his guts were on fire!”
My jaw literally dropped.
And I still use that expression.
My granny (and grandpa both) used the phrase “you better go back and lick your calf over” meaning you need to go back and fix whatever you’d done half-assedly. I crack my co-workers up by continuing to use that phrase whenever it seems appropriate.
Not my grandma, but this past Thanksgiving…
My sister was hosting the dinner, and besides my family there were several members of her husband’s family including his parents, sisters, their children and some of their significant others.
The boyfriend of one of the college aged children had recently graduated and was working in the management training program of a well known national sporting goods company.
Grandma sits down with her plate full of turkey, looks over to the boyfriend and says, “So, I understand you like Dick’s” :eek:
hilarity ensues
My MIL–my children’s grandmother–has the (to me) deeply annoying habit of replying to questions that she doesn’t know the answer to (simple questions like, “Where did BIL go in the car just now?” to which a simple “I don’t know” would suffice) with:
“Cats fur to make kitten britches.” This delivered with a seraphic, knowing smile.
Cats fur to make kitten britches. I’ve been listening to it for 33 years now, and it still makes me want to pound her on the head. “What does that MEAN??”
I know I’m going to hell, or coming back as a slug for laughing at this, but here we go.
About 10 years ago, my Grandma had a stroke. She lived in a trailer on my parents farm and when my sister went over to check on her she was outside on the lawn in her bra and granny panties. Sisterlebeef tried to talk to her, and ask her what had happened, Grandma started talking gibberish. Seriously mumbling dogface to the bannana patch.
Sis called 911 and the ambulance came and picked her up. When everybody went to see her at the hospital she had regained her speech with one little tic. For about the next three weeks, she ended every sentence with “Piano Piano Piano.”
Everything else was fine, no paralysis, slurred speech or pain, just “Piano Piano Piano” in a kind of sing song voice.
It still gets used around our house, but with a bit of meloncholy since Grandma died. Piano Piano Piano.
Don’t you just HATE THAT? One of my grandmother’s had a snort for situations just like you describe - along with a look - it’s hard to describe. But you never knew what in the hell it meant!
Case in point for my own dearly departed grandmother, the time in the hospital when she pointed and said in an extremely loud voice, “LOOK AT THAT BLACK MAN! his head’s all wavy” is a cherished family story. (You sort of had to be there.)
RIP.
This is from the wife’s granny not mine, who obviously is the product of a very different time. When all the bridesmaids were beginning to arrive for her granddaughter’s wedding (my S-I-L’s), one of them was obviously of Latin American descent. Granny saw her walking up the driveway and exclaimed “Oh good, the woman’s here to do the dishes!”
More recently, when her own daughter (my M-I-L) called to tell her she had cancer but not to worry, it was treatable, Granny sternly warner her “not to tell anyone!” Apparently, there was a time when having cancer was considered shameful, apparently insinuating that it was occurring because you’d done something immoral/improper.
This is so joining my list of Expressions for All Occasions™!!!
Eli
One day, my grandma and I were talking about a friend’s baby. “Poor thing,” grandma said. “It’s just as ugly as a dick.”
I froze. My grandma is a very ladylike woman and would never, ever say that word if she thought it had a vulgar meaning. I was hesitant to address it for fear of embarassing her, so I let it go.
I even wrote a thread about it to see if anyone else had ever hear this term and what, excatly, a “dick” is in this context. No one knew.