Fun vignettes not included in the mega-long Hannugivmas post below:
singing
My mom singing the first four bars (without words) of “Yellow Submarine” over and over and over until I just about killed her. I can’t tell if she’s aware that she does this or not, but she only sings the first four bars of the song, and repeats. Never the chorus, or any other part.
Drives me apeshit.
glastonbury
Getting lost going to Glastonbury. My grandma purported to know where she was going, but unfortunately, she’s getting to the age where that’s not always a reliable indicator of whether someone actually knows where they’re going, particularly if they’re as stubborn as my grandmother.
Problem #2 is that my mom has no sense of direction whatsoever. To say her sense of direction is like that of a doorknob would, alas, be an insult to doorknobs everywhere. So we ended up stopping to ask for directions, which was a smart move, because we would have ended up in Rhode Island at the rate we were going.
We ended up eating lunch around 4pm (when we left the house around 2) and not getting back to the house until literally 2 minutes before our ride was supposed to get there to take us to the airport. And he had already been there for 5 minutes by the time we showed.
eek
The other fun thing from that trip was my mom spacing and just following the car ahead of her instead of actually watching the turn light (which the guy in front of her shouldn’t have turned through anyway) and almost getting us hit by two cars, one for me, one for grandma.
I brought this up with her later, as it scared the shit out of me, and she had the nerve to say “All’s well that ends well.”
Right, and what would she be saying if these people hadn’t been able to stop for whatever reason and my grandma and I ended up in the damn hospital? She wasn’t on the side of the car with these people coming straight at her. I do wonder about her sometimes…
earring
My aunt Louise putting my mom up to giving JJ (Louise’s 67 year old, very square husband) an earring and certificate for free ear piercing. The look on JJ’s face was absolutely priceless.
This came when Louise visited her old college roommate Sheila (who is actually the former Deputy Director of Counterintelligence at the FBI) and seeing Sheila’s husband Walter’s fresh ear piercing.
However, Walter’s not quite JJ’s age, and doesn’t have 13 (soon to be 14) young grandkids who like pulling on everything they can get their hands on. Louise got a good laugh out of it, and managed to convince JJ that my mom is even more nuts than he already assumed her to be.
That’s everything I can think of right now. I’m sure my cousin Mark will read this and refresh my memory with more ridiculousness at some point, but I think that should hold the rest of you for now.