My mother's mother, Gammie, was my favorite person.
And that was even after she subjected me to the indignity of not only setting me up on a blind date (unusual but not unheard of) but then proceeding to go on it to ensure I didn't screw up. Read Here
(Shoot me in the face! I'm still embarrassed about that.)
To be clear, she wasn't clueless. No. She was a general's wife. She was switched on. She was aware.
She was aware that her youngest grandson didn't date much. She dropped hints that maybe I should get on it.
Some subtle.
Some blatant.
Even so, she kept it to prodding. She knew it was up to me. She would just be "supportive" because, while I may have been a slow goer, at least I was normal.
Until the following episode. Then she took the reins and hijacked my dating life in an attempt to save me from the eternal fires of perdition.
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It was my freshman year of college. I was living in the dorms. I hung out with friends. I drank beer. Clearly, I didn't chase girls, but I'd furtively stare at them across the quad/cafeteria/classroom/whatever. I'm just saying I was pretty damn run of the mill. Painfully shy with women, but normal.
What wasn't so normal, perhaps, was that I would drive down to Charleston to spend a weekend with my Gammie at the retirement home every month or so. The way I figure it, my friends went to see their parents more often. Gammie was like my mother, so I'm saying it was normal.
Normal. Normal! NORMAL!
Anyway, when I was down there being perfectly normal, we would go to restaurants and we would watch movies or TV together. Watching movies or TV together involved Gammie sitting in her high-backed salon chair next to her bed and me lying on her bed.
I'd be watching the movie/TV show. Gammie, though she participated in choosing what we were going to watch, usually only glanced at it occasionally while looking at her newspapers or catalogs and, mostly, catnapping while pretending to look at her newspaper or catalogs. That meant I got to "choose" watching Masterpiece Theater on PBS a lot. By myself for the most part, since she was reading or sleeping. And heaven help me if I changed the channel because "we were watching that!"
After a few visits like that, I'd had enough. I was going to watch something I wanted. I delicately explained that watching the same late 70's Agatha Christie adaptation every time I came down wasn't doing it for me. She let me go to the video store. I had Carte Blanche.
I knew what movie I was getting. The funny guy in the dorm, Jonah, had been going on and on about a sketch comedy called Kentucky Fried Movie. It was just the thing an 18yo guy would love. The sketches he'd described sounded hysterical to me.
And they were. Gammie, as per usual, fell asleep within minutes. I woke her up with my raucous laughter at the sketch "Danger Seekers", the funniest one Jonah told me about.
NSFW for one particular word.
Unfortunately, that meant she was also awake for the sketch "Catholic School Girls in Trouble", which he did not tell me about.
Around the time that a fantastic pair of Catholic School Girl naked boobies were pressed against a glass shower wall, a propos of nothing whatsoever, was when I made this face
And immediately jumped off the bed to turn off the tape. It wouldn't turn off.
It was too late.
"Ajax!!!! Why would you show me a pornographic movie?!!!" she said, perplexed.
"NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"
My grandmother thought I rented us a porno to watch together. That seemed like the worst thing I could ever imagine. She upped the ante, unfortunately.
"Your grandfather used to try to take me to blue movies...That Jezebel, Angie Dickinson..."
"NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! PLEASESTOPSAYINGANYTHING!!!"
Yeah, so not only did my sweet, adorable, wonderful grandmother think I was a pervert of the highest magnitude, now she was telling me about something that might possibly be related to her and my grandfather having sex.
The discomfort and awkwardness you feel when your parents bring up their sex lives is amplified by 100 when your sweet, adorable, wonderful grandmother launches in to it.
"And we had a wonderful sex life..."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!I'MSORRYI'MSORRYI'MSORRYIHADNOIDEATHATWASONTHEREJONAH'SGOINGTODIEAGRUESOMEDEATHANDI'MSORRYI'MSORRYI'MSORRYBUTPLEASESTOPTALKINGPLEASESTOPTALKING!!!!"
She did not stop talking, however, so I did the only thing I could. I ran out of the room screaming so I wouldn't hear about Gammie and Grandaddy gettin' it on. I didn't know what to do. I called mom and told her what happened. This was a significant trauma and I needed support.
She laughed and laughed.
I couldn't handle it. I was embarrassed and ashamed and I packed up and hightailed it back to the dorm. Mom called me the next day.
"Yup, she's informed the family that you're a pervert who tried to show her a porno."
After a month or so, I finally had the gumption to go back down to visit. I still didn't want to watch Masterpiece Theater so I went to the video store. I grabbed a normal movie. It wasn't even one I wanted to watch. I figured that old people like Woody Allen. I certainly didn't watch his movies. I just knew he was old and other old people thought he was funny. His most recent movie had just been released on tape.
Gammie was not sure if me playing another video was a good idea.
I put in the movie. It started. There was some sort of family picnic going on. Julia Louis-Dreyfus went in the house to get something. Her brother in law was in the house. Out of nowhere, this happened:
AGAIN??!!! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME SATAN?
"Ajax, I cannot believe that you'd show me another blue movie!!!"
And that's why Gammie felt like she needed to set me up with a girl, any girl.
My grandmother was convinced I tried to show her porn, not once, but twice.
If that doesn't get you an express ticket to Hell, I don't know what does.
