Story 7: Little Things

We would sometimes tease Grandma about the following:

1. Grandma treasured most some of her least valuable possessions. Valuable antiques would be sitting in the basement, hiding in a back corner, or holding tools and paint cans. A little ceramic cat which she found at some garage sale, on the other hand, got a place of honour on top of the piano and was very specifically willed to me. She told me solemnly that the ceramic cat would someday be mine, because I was the only one in the family who would not sell the cat for a quarter at a garage sale. She wrote my name on the bottom of the cat, and ended up giving it to me when she moved to Regina. You know, just to make sure I really got the cat. I also got all of her 1975 Eatons catalogues (the last year that Eatons put out a catalogue) as well, because I was a historian and therefore would not discard these items as junk.

2. As I mentioned in a previous story, dishes in Grandma's house were only used for their assigned purposes. Do not even think about setting a pie fork out for a regular meal. (I still can't use a pie fork for anything but dessert.) She had a lot of dishes.

3. Grandma, while babysitting us kids one time, once made us dress up to go visit the family of May-B, Ky and LynnieC. They were in t-shirts and jeans (because we were over all the time! We were extras in their household! I had chores at their home!), and we were in dresses and dress pants. Because we were "going visiting."

4. When my grandparents had a garage sale before they sold the house, one customer made the unfortunate mistake of presuming that he could take two 25-cents-each items and inform her, "I'll pay a quarter for both of these." The presumption! Grandma, full of righteous indignation, responded, "You most certainly will not!" In my aunt's version of the story, the customer then drops the items, runs to his truck, and speeds away.

5. My Grandma's immediate response to the discovery that my (very young) brother had somehow locked himself into the bathroom was to shriek, "Call the fire department!" The door had one of those handles that you could unlock with a nail. (Which is what my mom's cousin, who was boarding with us at the time, did immediately after that.)

These stories were especially funny to us because, in situations where I would expect her to be somehow shocked, she could be very stable and accepting. (I loved how she shut down other old women who were scandalised about a young man showing up at church with his hair in a spiked mohawk by saying how glad she was to see him at church.)