The Things Men Do to Not Look Like A Jonas Brother

This post is long overdue by about a year, but I decided this would be the right time to tell these stories. In the last post, I talked about how my grandparents influenced my life more than mostly anyone I knew. When they passed, I felt like an orphan in my own way.

Today, I would like to tell you a little about my grandma. She was the most badass grandma I ever knew. If she was watching me type this right now, she’d be laughing. She would swear at old people who drove down the road and were in her way, albeit being old herself. She would speed. She would do what she wanted, when she wanted, and no one could take that away from her. If I turn out to be like her, I can’t complain. She was loved. She still is loved.

Last year, my grandma ended up in the hospital. This was when she was really starting to get sick and we knew that our time was becoming limited with her. If I were the one in the hospital, I would have been a bowl full of cranky. I don’t do well in hospitals. I can go for tests and appointments, but if you leave me there, I will have my own little panic attack. I don’t like feeling trapped and alone, and hospitals will definitely do that to you, but I digress.

Grandma hated hospitals as well, but she would never complain. If she did, it was in this sarcastic, Alex from Wizards of Waverly Place, kind of way. All you could do was laugh, which is exactly what she wanted you to do.

While in the hospital this particular time, she had an interesting roommate. Grandma, having nothing else to do, always made friends with her roomies. But this time she was roomed with a woman who must have been going into dementia. She wasn’t totally sure what was going on and kind of did her own thing. On top of that, she also needed oxygen to, well, breathe. I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.

One day while we were there, she was told to do her arm exercises to keep her body strong while she was cooped up in a hospital bed. I’m not sure if this woman was a Maverick, really out of it, or just a bit cheeky, but she did the best thing ever. She proceeded to take the oxygen out of her nose, and use the chord that went in her nose to do her arm exercises. Yes, folks, she was using her oxygen tube as a weight.

Grandma’s response? “Oh, she does that all the time. A nurse will be in, in a few minutes to tell her to put it back in her nose so she doesn’t stop breathing and die.” A few minutes later, here came the nurse.

While there, we somehow got to talking about how Aunt Bev said she was leaving everything to me when she passed. Don’t ask me how this happened, because that conversation had nothing to do with Grandma and her being in the hospital, but it happened. Grandma just looked at me, hunkered down in her bed, and said “It wouldn’t be hard to kill her. All you’d have to do was push her down a flight of stairs.” Then she cackled and changed the subject. She was kidding, of course, but that was my Grandma.

When we were getting ready to leave, Grandma decided it was time for her to go home. She had it with staying in the hospital, since she was now just there for observation. She was done being observed, so she followed us to the elevator. The nurse, fearing she was going to try to run away, came over and told her she was not to leave. She wasn’t going to, but in fact, was just trying to freak out the nurses. It worked.

But the best part was when she told the nurse, “There’s no way you could ever find me if I did get in the elevator. It’s like Where’s Waldo in a hospital. All of us patients are dressed the same.” The nurse couldn’t disagree.

After we got on the elevator and began out descent down, it stopped like it often did for someone else to get in. It opened up to a little younger than middle aged guy who was an employee of the hospital. He looked at us confused and asked us what way the elevator was going. We told him down. He got in and started laughing.

He then proceeded to tell us that, no matter what floor he was on or where he was waiting for the elevator at, the buttons never lit up to tell him if the elevator that stopped was going up or down, so he never knew if he should get on it, because he didn’t know if it was stopping for him, or for someone else to get off. He then jokingly said it was a conspiracy, and that the elevators refused to tell him where they were going because they simply didn’t like him since he rode them several times a day. They felt overworked by him and were rebelling. I adore that guy.

Possibly the funniest story I have to tell happened on the way to the hospital the following day. We were stopped at a stoplight, and there was a group of people pushing a car onto a cart for towing in an empty parking lot. As we were watching them, we saw a midget make his way over and start talking to the people. There’s nothing funny about midgets unless they start singing “Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” except this midget was wearing mens' shorts as pants. You read that right.

And for the record, they were huge on him. He looked like he was going gangster with the big pants that were ready to fall down, but yet he didn’t get them long enough to reach his shoes, so his socks just stuck out randomly.

He was just round enough that childrens' clothing probably didn’t fit him, and mens' pants were too long. However, it was completely obvious he was wearing mens' shorts...as pants. We decided this was acceptable since his only other option was to buy pants for teenage boys, and he probably didn’t want to look like a Jonas Brother. We could understand, but I still don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard in my entire life. Thinking back on it, I still laugh. Just picture it for me. You’ll laugh, too.