Old Folks and Phones: A Match Made in Hell

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Have you ever had to give anyone over seventy someone’s number over the phone?  Talk about nerve wrecking.  Today while on the phone with my grandmother, she asked me to give her someone’s number.  Honestly, I’d rather she had just asked for one of my damn kidneys.  Something tells me it would’ve been far less painful, and no doubt taken half the time.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my grandmother.  She is literally the sweetest woman in the world.  But, I would rather gnaw my own arm off; before I give that lady someone else’s number over the phone.  No one on earth has that much patience.  That woman would make Mother Theresa curse her out, and then light up a joint.  Sure, anyone can heal lepers and feed the poor of the land.  But it takes a special kind of patience to give Mrs. Mae-Ruth Brown someone’s phone number, while she attempts to write it down.

Since I moved to New York, I make sure to call my grandmother at least once a month; and I always have the same strategy: get in and get out in under three minutes; and never under any circumstances do I ever mention another family member’s name.  Because that will no doubt lead to her asking for their number, and me losing mu f*cking sanity.  A typical call goes something like this:  “Hey Grandma.  New York is great, the weather is great, hey sorry to hear about your toes…yeah diabetes is a bitch.   Well at least you still got 6 good ones left…okay talk to you next month.” It took me years to develop this strategy, and it normally goes without hitch.  But as luck would have it, today I caught her in the middle of a huge crisis.

My grandmother sings in what’s called The Old Folk’s Choir at church, and this was the Sunday of their big annual performance.  It seemed Grandma was all in a panic, because the market across the street had apparently just run out of Depends.  You see, its common knowledge that whenever Grandma Mae-Ruth “catches the spirit” in church; she unfortunately lets go of everything else.  And that includes control of her bladder.  Last year, she got a little overly excited in the middle of her choir’s big showstopping number Wade in the Water.  And let’s just say; by the time she was done, they all were doing just that.  Talk about life imitating art.  That day, Grandma Mae-Ruth gave a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Let go and let God”.  She really gives it all to Jesus.  Literally.

Given the dire circumstances, she needed my brother to drive her to the mall and had “coincidentally” just misplaced his number.  As much as I wanted to say I didn’t know it, or pretend I was going through a tunnel at that moment in the car: something told me that letting your grandma piss herself at church; probably wasn’t the most Christian thing to do.  I kid you not, below is the exact transcript of our conversation:

Me:   Alright are you ready Grandma?  It’s 616, 242-635…

Grandma:  Wait a minute.  Slow down.  Now, first you said 6?

Me:  Yes Grandma, it’s 616.  Then it’s 242-63…

Grandma:  Wait a minute you’re going too fast.  I’m not a computer.  Just slow down and breathe.  Now you said it was 6, then a 1.  Now what came next?

Me:  I said 6 Grandma!  It’s a 6!  You got that?  Then it’s 242…

Grandma:  242?  Are you sure?  Cause that don’t sound right.

Me:  Yes Grandma that’s it!  If you already knew it, then why did you asked me?  You asked me for brother’s number, so I’m giving it to you.  It’s 616, 242-6355.  Now did you get that?

Grandma:  Alright, hold on then.  Let me go find a pen.

After 15 minutes of listening to her rummage through literally every drawer in the house; she finally returned for what seemed like a never ending game of “Who’s on First?” She repeated that phone number back to me so many damn times; after a while hell, I actually started to get confused.  By the time she finished cutting me off, transposing numbers, and repeating back what she “thought” I said; I actually began to second guess own myself.  I call the number every day and believe it or not, I started to think, “Damn Brett, maybe you really don’t know the number after all.”  Now, this is the point of the conversation that my mind always begins to play tricks on me.  Paranoia sets in and I immediately start to think, “Wait, is this lady just f*king with me?”  “What if this whole ‘sweet grandmother’ thing is nothing but one big act?  Maybe after all these years, this is just her sick little way of paying me back, for that time I hid her dentures.”  When I was nine, the church named my grandmother the “Usher of the Decade”, which meant that her picture would be on the front page of The Grand Rapid’s Press Newspaper.  The hugest honer they could bestow.  I was a very mischievous kid; so on the morning of the big photo shoot, I thought it would be funny if I hid her teeth before I left for school.  Sh*t, how was I supposed to know that she would still actually go through with the shoot?

Looking back, I realized that I probably shouldn’t have done that.  But, on the bright side; at least she did get a brand new set of dentures out of the big fiasco.  It turned out that next to the infamous JFK’s assassination, for some strange reason, the “Toothless Grandma” edition of The Grand Rapid’s Press, ended up being one their biggest sellers ever in the history.  Jay Leno even showed the picture on The Tonight Show.  As a result, a local dentist ended up hiring Mae-Ruth as the spokes model for his new line of dentures: which made perfect since; especially seeing how everyone in the country had already seen her “before” shot.   And unlike her previous set that I hid, at least this pair didn’t constantly keep slipping out of her mouth whenever she read the morning announcements at church.

Believe it or not, it took me almost a half an hour to give that lady a simple 10-digit phone number.  And can you believe after all that; she actually had the nerve to say, “Thanks.  Now do you have his email address too?”

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