Genetically Fucked

I’m back from my holiday hiatus and I figured what could be better than to write about my Thanksgiving experiences. There’s nothing better than family bonding and binge drinking.

You’ve heard enough about Crazy Nanny…so I figured I’d let you in on a little secret, my other grandma is out of her fucking mind too! Yeah! She’s actually not really my grandmother…she's my father’s cousin, but he grew up in a big Italian family in North Jersey and they all took turns raising everybody else’s kid. Evelyn never had any children of her own and being over twenty years older than my dad, she’s always just seemed more like a grandmother than anybody else on his side of the family did.

Ev is eighty six now and when you get to a certain age you start slowing down. She can’t deal with this. The fact that she can’t walk too far makes her crazy. She was a city girl and never even had a driver’s license, so she spent every day of her young life walking all over Newark, whether it was to work or the store, post office…whatever. And even after she moved down to a retirement village with her husband (who has since passed away and God bless him being married to her) she still made a habit of walking herself the few blocks to the “mini-mall” in her community.

She’s never been the picture of stability…but lately it seems to be getting worse and worse by the day. And she was extra nuts the day after Thanksgiving…which is weird, because she was in good spirits the night before. She was hanging out at Crazy Nanny’s with us, had a good meal…shit, it’s better than being stuck in her house with nobody to talk to. You’d expect her to be happy. But her schizophrenia or whatever the fuck it is sure did kick in Friday morning. She woke up and instantly started crying about how bad her life is. What? I’m confused. Did she have some sort of nightmare or something? Who knows? After a couple of minutes of crying, she starts yelling and cursing Jesus. I’m not kidding. All I hear coming from the spare bedroom is “Fucking Jesus…he did this to me.” I had to help her down the stairs with her bag and the whole time, each single step, she’d say “Fucking Jesus.” Finally, I explained to her that if she shut up and stopped cursing poor Jesus that maybe she wouldn’t be so out of breathe and the steps wouldn’t seem so complicated. She actually got a chuckle out of that and held off cursing him until she hit the bottom step. All this anti-Jesus crap from the woman who has gone to church regularly for her entire life.

I can see it’s going to be a fun morning, so I go out and get coffee…all the while taking my time in hopes that my mom has left to take her home. No such luck. I go back in the house and Ev’s still at it…crying, cursing, crying, cursing. If my mother didn’t take her home soon, I might have wound up cursing Jesus.

They’re just about ready to go when Ev decides she doesn’t want to go to the grocery store. My mom explains to her that she won’t be down for a couple of weeks and that she should stock up on food.

Ev: (talking like a truck driver, which is obviously genetic if you know me at all) I don’t give a shit. I’ll eat crackers. I don’t want to go to the store.

My poor mother doesn’t know what to say to her anymore so I figured I’d try to help out…

B: What is wrong with you? Is this crazy shit genetic?

Ev: (smirking at me) Just wait ‘til you’re my age. Then you’ll say that crazy old bitch was right.

What can you say to that? My mom just shook her head and laughed. So did I for that matter. But I think we can safely say that I won’t be seeing eighty six years old and if I did, I can only imagine what kind of treat I’ll be…a combination of both Evelyn and Crazy Nanny…sipping Jack Daniel’s and hatin’ on everybody in my sight. I have just decided right now that I’m not going to quit smoking. I want to spare my children (if I have any) from dealing with me considering I’m not exactly a prize at twenty nine.

My mom and her finally leave. And of course my mother took her to the grocery store. And when she got home she told me that Evelyn kept up the crying/cursing routine the entire time. I didn’t expect any less from her.

Ahh…the holidays. There’s nothing like being stuck with your family all day and looking around thinking everybody is insane. And then you realize you’re genetically linked to 85% of them. Fantastic.

On a side note though, while I was out Saturday night drinking like it was my job, I was telling X and C the story. I told them that I’m worried about getting older and going crazy…to which X responds, laughing, “It’s a good thing you’re not showing any warning signs.”

Jerk. I think I’m doing pretty good considering my DNA.