When You're 97 Years Old...

...Anything goes! We had the pleasure of spending Thanksgiving with my grandmother this year. She came to visit all the way from North Carolina. My Nannie is a wonderful, loving, outgoing, perplexing woman. We enjoyed our visit with her, but we always get a few laughs when we talk with her. I guess when you are 97, you just let all of your opinions about everything out to air. Here are some highlights from our Thanksgiving with Nannie:


1. Thanks to Nannie, we are now aware that the "red Chinese" have amassed troops on our borders and are waiting to attack the U.S., take over, and turn us all Communist.


2. Her thoughts on the election, spoken with sadness and great conviction: "Poor, old John McCain." (This in and of itself is so wonderfully hilarious because she is as old as poor, old John McCain's mother!)


3. It should be noted that she and my grandfather were always ardent Democrats, probably since before FDR and his New Deal. JFK might have been their Second Coming. I think my grandfather would have voted for Mickey Mouse if he had run under the Democratic ticket. So it came as a great shock to us when she passionately announced that my grandfather would have hated the way that the party is being run these days (she thinks the Clintons want to take over the U.N., which is funny because I know for a fact she voted for Clinton in both of the 1990's elections). She proclaimed that "we are Republicans now." I'm not sure why she added the "we" in there, as my grandfather passed away in 1994, but perhaps she feels so strongly about her recent political defection that she felt he also needed to be included to save his good name.


4. On facial hair: Riding next to my brother in the car, she stared hard at his new beard and finally said, "I don't like beards." Jamie felt so bad he went home and shaved it off.


5. She has special water. Thanks to Nannie's hair dresser, who sold her a marvelous contraption, Nannie now has "special water" that she must take everywhere with her. She claims that it can heal cuts and bruises, and it makes her loose weight. She strong-armed my mom into bringing a small cooler of it up from North Carolina. Mom took a sip of it when Nannie wasn't looking and it tasted just like her regular water...filtered. Jamie's sister-in-law did not help the situation when, over Thanksgiving dinner, she told my grandmother that it sounded like magic water. I am pretty certain that Nannie said that's ridiculous. It's just special, that's all.


6. The wonder of the Playstation: Jamie got bored at my mom's and found his old stash of Play Station 1 games. He decided that even though the graphics are terrible, he'd play Madden 2000 on the Play Station 2 to pass the time. My grandmother toddled in with her cane, peered at the TV, and exclaimed "Oh, who's playing?" My brother didn't have the heart to tell her that she was watching a (very poor) version of a video football game so he told her she was watching the Colts and the Skins. She sat down to watch and said, "Well, I've never seen football players on ice skates before. Why are they ice skating?" It was all Jamie could do to keep his cool. He decided not to say anything because he knew she'd be asleep soon anyways. Sure enough, he looked back two minutes later and she was fast asleep in my mom's big arm chair.


7. On our new addition: Most people who've come over to see our new room have shown polite admiration for all the work that went into it. Nannie made one positive comment on Tim's bookshelves and then all she said was, "I put the closet over there [on my plans]." Oookaaayyyy.





If I make it to 97, I hope I have the energy that she has each day. I am looking forward to being able to speak my mind too.