Let me introduce you to the concept of a Gramma Stella:
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That lady in red on the left is a Gramma Stella, and she is pretty entertaining, which only increases with age because her filter and her inhibitions are going out the window. (Ok, so maybe we also encourage her to drink whenever we see her as well because it just amplifies the outrageousness.) She also has been somewhat deaf since childhood so the combination of her sometimes mishearing the conversation or misjudging the ability of others’ hearing can also be funny. Case and point: one time she was talking to my mother about my sister who was in the back seat and she said to my mom “What? She can’t hear me, can she?” Also, her phone in the back of her house is so loud that you can hear both sides of the conversation from the front of the house.
Because she’s 82 and relatively sheltered, I’ve been forcing her to experience new things. This has become even more important since a month or so ago when I found out that in 82 years she was just for the first time having a brownie. A BROWNIE. I don’t even know where you’d say she’s been living for her whole life, because even the people who live under rocks probably have brownies. Last year for my birthday I made her come to Benihana (hibachi). At first she was kind of cranky about it because she is very picky and not very experimental when it comes to food, but now she rants and raves about it. Once the chef made the little beating heart out of the fried rice, she was done.
Last night she came over because we were going out to dinner. First she tried to greet me but couldn’t remember my name. She actually just stared blankly at me for about twenty seconds before she remembered it. This was new and different because usually she just runs through the gamut of names before she picks the right one in rapid fire succession. “Hi, Jane, uh, Diane, uh, I mean Donna, I mean Jilly, I mean Alyssa.” THEN she says to me, “What did you do different? You look good.” As in “What did you do different, you actually look good for a change.” She hands me these backhanded comments all the time, but increasingly as she gets older. A month ago due to my decision to go back to school she laughed at me and said, “What are you going to be a professional student?” Like I haven’t been working my butt off for the last two years and I haven’t had multiple jobs since high school. She actually offered this as an alternative to me: “Why don’t you just get married?” Yes, because getting married and relying on men has worked out so well for all of the other women in my family (/NOT). It doesn’t even make sense because her husband died early and her dad died at when she was ten. She herself worked until she was 75, and her sister still works full time and is 88. So yes, my grandma’s solution to the economic turmoil and horrendous job market of the current day is to just get married and have babies. I’ll write that down.
Among other accusations are the possibilities that I am actually an escort and an alcoholic. The escort claim came from the news about the Long Island serial killer who used Craigslist to find his victims. The rationalization is as follows: Alyssa uses Craigslist therefore Alyssa must be a hooker. And the alcoholic claim (which she wrote me a four page letter about at 3am in the morning) stems from this bruise that I showed her.
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This bruise was on my hip (this photo is of the side of my body, before I developed a huge gut and you began to be able to tell what is my belly just from looking at it) . I showed it to her because it was massive. I told her the story that accompanied it: Alyssa is a little tipsy in college, Alyssa decides to playfully nip people (you say bite, I say nip), a male nippee shoves Alyssa into an old school radiator. Due to the fact that Alyssa has Ehlers Danlos and bruises very easily, Alyssa develops obnoxious and phenomenal bruise from being thrown into a piece of heating equipment. No where in this story did I say “Alyssa drinks enormous amounts of alcohol every day to drown her sorrows.” BUT because I was a little drunk one time in college and got a bruise- I must be an alcoholic. Despite the fact that several people have told her that I rarely ever drink, and despite the fact that she comes over for dinner every other week and I almost never drink, even while she downs minimum two glasses of wine, I am doubtful that I will ever be able to convince her that I am not a straight-up lush.
The final thing that must be mentioned is that Gramma Stella hates sex, but talks about it endlessly. This started when I was about 16 and has not stopped since. One time she actually said, “Sex is so gross, I don’t even know why someone would invent sex,” and she unapologetically asserts that one would rather have a colonoscopy than a gynecological exam. As someone who has maybe been to both kinds of doctors, I’m gonna say that I pick gynecological exam all around. I don’t even think it’s that awkward. I think being stuck for 50 floors in an elevator with a stranger is actually more awkward, I know because I have been to the 69th floor of the Chrysler building, and it is rather uncomfortable because you can’t even pretend to be looking at the little TV screen because there are none.
I am admittedly not the favorite grandchild anymore. I may or may not have been a catalyst in the breakup of our entire family, and it makes me sad that she has a little bit of a grudge against me. But if it means I get insulted or blamed for ridiculous and impossible things, I’m ok with that, because it makes the impression that I do of her all the better.
Tagged: alcoholism, college, craigslist, drinking, EDS, ehlers danlos, family, gramma stella, gynecology, hooker, humor, inappropriateness, long island serial killer, marriage, musings, old people Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
