Grandma Wins

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• August 4, 2014

It’s a hot summer day in Florida, where a small apartment complex is attempting to entertain the children who are still off from school by having a belly flop contest at the pool.  The kids line up, eager to show what they’re made of, when an elderly woman in her 80’s approaches the pool.

The senior citizen is Emily George, my grandmother.  Grandma joins the line of children.  What bystanders are thinking, I could only guess.  Probably thinking she’s confused.  It’s true my grandmother is often confused.  She’ll tell you the same story over and over, and laugh at her own punch line, as if she hadn’t told it thousands of times.

Some years ago, my best friend Jimmy and I visited my Grandma and my Great Aunt Dottie.  Sure, it’s a nice thing to visit your aging kin, but our purposes were a bit more selfish, as my Grandma lives not too far from Orlando, and we love Disney World and Universal Studios.

One night, when Jimmy and I weren’t at a park, we played dominoes with my Grandma and Great Aunt Dottie.  We weren’t 21, but our fake ID’s fooled the liquor store clerk, so we were kind of drunk.  Emily and Dottie are two of twenty children.  That’s not a typo.  Twenty fucking Irish children.  They were dirt poor.  They liked to brag about who’s life was worse.

Grandma started telling me us a story about when she was pregnant with my Uncle Brian, the youngest of six.  I was listening because much to my surprise, I haven’t heard this story hundreds of times yet.

“I was in the hospital,” she says, “and the nurse asked me how many kids I have.  I said, this with be my sixth.  She said, ‘you must really love children.’  And I said ‘no, my husband just likes to fuck.'”

I literally fell off my chair.  This was not the punch line I was expecting.  I was hysterical for several minutes.  Partly out of horror.  I nearly pissed my pants.  Jimmy was laughing, uncomfortably.  My Grandma and Great Aunt Dottie seemed confused as to why I was frenzied with laughter on the kitchen floor.

Present day, she’s on a line with children, for the belly flop contest.  Like her inappropriate jokes/stories, she’s no idea that her actions are peculiar.  Emily George, who’s eighty something years old, holds her nose and belly flops into the pool.  When she comes up, there’s a moment of silence.  People weren’t sure if she did that on purpose or not.  Someone jumped in the pool and asked if she was okay.  But when we she surfaces, all smiles, the spectators applaud.

Grandma wins the belly flop contest.

I wish I were there, to see her in her glory.  When asked if it hurt, she simply replied, “No, I had on a one piece.”  As if that makes a difference at all, or that we suspected she might be rocking a sexy bikini.