On the flip side

I feel like some of the things I said about my grandparents yesterday were pretty harsh. On the one hand nothing I said is untrue. On the other hand I feel like a little balance is in order.

My grandfather used to wear just hilariously awful combinations of clothes. Horizontally striped shirts with plaid pants both in shades of lime green and lemon parfait yellow. I also have a hilarious picture of him dressed as a (not so pretty) woman and making my grandmother crack up. (Note to self: just get the damned Flickr account already! Also, a scanner.)

My grandmother cooked some of the best white trash esque foods ever. Shrimp salad rolls on white bread hot dog buns, lasagne with sauce from a jar, punch made from Hi-C and ginger ale, shrimp wiggle (essentially canned shrimp, water, flour, salt & pepper, peas) served over saltines.

My grandfather had the biggest, craziest, most prolific vegetable garden on the planet.

My grandmother constantly had the most flawless manicure of anyone I've ever seen who does their own cooking & cleaning.

My grandfather used to play this ridiculously fun game when he came to visit. We'd see them drive up and by the time we got out to the walk he'd be walking with his head down asking if we knew what was growing on our walkway. There would be coins sprinkled between the stones and we got to keep what we found, and he always knew where it all was so we wouldn't miss any. Now, the disturbing corollary to this is that when I was much older my grandmother told me that he used to do the same thing with her weekly pin money only he'd do it in dollars and he'd sprinkle them on the stairs from their front door up to their bedroom. So didn't need to think that over too carefully. The wonderful corrollary is that my good friend Mrs. Batch lived next door to me during the coin growing era and she would come over for the harvest most of the time. When she got married my grandfather sent her a handful of change that my mom wrapped up with a message that he'd found it growing for her.

My grandmother knew all these hysterical G rated cheers and rhymes that for some reason are just as funny at 36 as they were when I was 6. "Fuzzy Wuzzee was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he?" "Rip rah ree, kick 'em in the knee! Rip rah rass, kick 'em in the other knee!" "Millie fell in the toaster and burned up dead? No! Millie fell off her coaster and bumped her head!"

I could probably go on forever like that but you get the idea. Not bad people, just not people I had a lot in common with...unless you count the silly jokes.