Tuesday, December 26, 2006

What do Christmas and porn have in common?

Stay tuned to find out. My Grandma is a one-of-a-kind. Some might use the word "crazy" but I love her dearly. Gram and Gramps are respectively Agnostic and Atheist, so Christmas is just a time for visiting and there is no spiritual meaning at all (this is a very difficult issue I pray about a lot). So she calls Christmas morning at 8:30am and says, "we are leaving now and we are going to be at your house in half an hour, so be ready." My kids aren't even all up yet, and we haven't eaten breakfast, but Gram assures me there is no time to waste because they have dinner plans for 5:00pm. Nowhere else to go until 5, but when Gram gets something in her head, it's law. "We want to drop off gifts and get a picture in front of your tree and leave." The "Drive-by Christmas". So Gram comes in and right away wants to tell us about the funeral she was at for her ex-brother-in-law (Joe). She starts in about how Joe's son, Timmy, was giving the eulogy and she stops and says, "Timmy is sort of shy. He goes into hotels and puts in porno onto the tv's. He's not a social person." It was all I could do to not burst out laughing. "Merry Christmas and cousin Timmy likes porn!" Turns out he installs pay-per-views in hotel rooms. Presumably he installs a selection that includes more than "porno," but Gram seemed to hone in on the naughty aspect of his job rather well. She's like that. Go for the shock value. Fortunately, the kids didn't ask me to expound on what "porno" is. Whew. (Am I going to attract all sorts of Pervy Pervs from Google now with this post?) After they left, our 10-year-old daughter, "M", said, in the sweetest, hushed voice, "isn't Grandma kind of old to be so weird?" She meant it in the sweetest way. Honest.

This is the same Grandma that was asking me last Maundy Thursday what the meaning of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday was, and when I was finished, said, "That is interesting; someone should write a book explaining all that!" She was so. Totally. Serious.

A few months ago, I was having lunch with her and all the kids were with me. My 9-year-old son, "Zippy," was picking on his sister, so Gram took matters into her own Agnostic hands and said, "WHY DON'T YOU FOLLOW THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AND 'DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU??!' " Zippy knows the Bible well (makes his Mama proud) and he was bursting at the seams to correct her, but he just winked at me and quit bothering his sister.

So, there, now you know that, in one very unfortunate house in the Midwest, on Christmas morning, an 85-year-old Grandma was discussing porno. Enough said.

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