Man alive, Wednesdays are always interesting. I take my 80+ year old grandmother to a nearby Publix and help her with her grocery shopping while I also get my shopping done. I never really have to worry about coming up with anything to write about on Wednesdays, because those grocery store trips provide a writer with plenty of material.
My grandma takes her grocery store trips seriously. If she can’t find a brand name she wants, or if employees don’t immediately drop everything they’re doing and bend over backwards to answer her barrage of questions, she lapses into stereotypical old lady mode. This involves loudly complaining about how much better customer service was back in the old days, acting as if the store has commited a hate crime against the elderly for running out of the special toothpaste for dentures, and general old person melodrama.
I love my grandma, she’s stood by me through a lot of bad stuff and really helped me out as I was going through so many tribulations as a teenager and young adult. And I appreciate all the things she’s done for me and continues to do for me. She’s been a good maternal figure, and a good friend. It hurts me to see her turning into something she has always said she didn’t want to become, a stereotypical mouthy and irritable old lady. Sometimes I feel guilty laughing at some of her old lady behaviors, but it’s important to see the humor in things. I’m just glad she’s still around, even if she’s a bit more…animated than she ever was until recently.
Today, she went on the warpath quickly upon our arrival in Publix. She wanted a five pound bag of flour, and they were out of them. She went freaking crackers on me. “I can’t believe this place doesn’t even have five pound bags of flour! What’s Publix coming to?” she said to the heavens above at a very loud volume.
I stupidly pointed out that they had several other sizes of bags of flour.
She got bug-eyed and blurted out angrily, “I don’t want any other size bag! I want a dang five pound bag of flour!”
“Okay, okay, jeez, grandma. Just settle down, all right? It’s all fine. Let’s just finish looking down this aisle.”
But the octogenarian beast had chewed through the leash.
“And look at the rest of the place! It looks like they haven’t restocked in forever! And the attitude around here is bad too! I don’t like the direction this place is going at all!”
I pause here to point out that I saw very few things that looked like they needed restocking. No more than usual anyway. Stores can’t keep every shelf fully stocked 365 days a year. And the attitude comment had apparently come when she wandered over to the deli to bemoan the fact that they had no ready-made seven layer salads in their section. They were very busy with other customers, but the old lady in her thought her problem was dire enough to take precendence over the people who were getting sandwiches at the deli counter at the time. Because they were out of seven layer salads, and couldn’t immediately drop everything they were working on, she had decided there was a store wide attitude problem.
I wasn’t really interested in jumping in front of the train any more. Moving on…
Have you ever noticed how many dummies use the non-word “irregardless”? Yeah, you mean regardless, chief. It drives me nuts how many basic things about their own language the people around here butcher. The number of people who don’t know the correct times to use “your” and “you’re” is also astonishing. It’s funny to hear all the rednecks around here bitching about people coming to America and not speaking English, when most of them don’t really know how to correctly speak the language either. The difference between “to” and “too” also eludes the pea-sized brains of the local Bubbas. Just simple stuff that should be learned by second grade.
When I was a teenager, my granddad was always finding stuff for me to do. If you walk in his field of vision, he will give you a chore or errand to do. I used to tell my friends, “If my granddad asks if you have plans later, for God’s sake say yes or you’ll be pruning the trees in his front yard.”
One particular day, my granddad had decided I was going to help him garden. I’ve never really done a lot of outdoor type stuff, and never had much interest in it either. But his NT need to make me do things he considered “man’s work” made for interesting episodes. He grew up on a farm, and because he was so familiar with all of the tools used in gardening and making repairs, he assumed I was as well. He had ordered me to help him ready a garden, and barked out “Hand me the hoe.”
Now, I was about 17, and the only kind of ho I was familiar with came with two legs and a 50-50 chance that you’d need a trip to the free clinic for some penicillin. I didn’t know there was a garden tool called a hoe, and certainly didn’t know what it looked like. I stood there, trying to figure out which tool he might be talking about.
“Dammit, son, the hoe! THE DAMNED HOE!!” he bellowed.
Finally, he just reached over and grabbed the hoe, muttering something under his breath that I feel sure was unflattering.
Another time, he and I went on a trip together. He took me to Los Angeles to see the Dodgers play a game at Dodger Stadium, my favorite MLB ballpark. It was really cool of him to do that, since I know he thinks Californians are all hippies and freaks. I had a good time with the old guy, for the most part. He was patient about letting me take pictures of the ballpark and even took me down to Anaheim and San Diego to see the ballparks in those places. But for some reason, he wanted to have at least one meal a day at the Denny’s down the street from our hotel. We were in Los Angeles, with every kind of restaraunt imaginable, and we were wearing a path to the local Denny’s. There are worse things, of course, but I thought it was really weird, and I’m usually the one being told I’m weird.
One night, we were in the hotel room, and he needed to make some notes about directions for the trip to San Diego. The hotel had a few desk-type items provided with the room, like pens, pads, and envelopes.
“Son, had me an envelope”, he said. But he pronounced it “envelop”, as in the verb.
“What, granddad? Envelop what?” I asked.
“Dammit son, an envelop”, he sternly said, stabbing the air muderously with his index finger as he pointed to the small stack of ENVELOPES.
My grandmother still laughs every time I tell that story.
The Yankees won again last night against the Rays, with my man Hideki Matsui popping a home run. I have to say I’m a little concerned about Girardi’s insistence on playing Jason Giambi so much. He isn’t really contributing to the team right now. I never have understood why they don’t try Matsui at first. He has good enough instincts to learn the position. He sure couldn’t be a worse defensive first baseman than Giambi. Like most big, slow, power hitting first baseman, Giambi’s decline looks like it might get really ugly. Matsui at first would free up Damon to play left full time. His arm sucks, but he still has pretty good range. The team opens a short series against Boston tonight, which means the return of the preposterous hype that accompanies every Yankees-Red Sox series.
People seem to be enjoying the way I rag on ESPN and some of their more irritating employees. It makes me feel good to know that there are a lot of other sports fans out there who don’t like the direction The Worldwide Leader in Self-Congratulation has been going in the past several years. I get so sick of their overestimation of their place in the sports world. The schmucks have to butt into everything. Like these interviews with mangers mid-game. What they consider cutting-edge is really just voyeuristic and obnoxious. I wish the MLB managers would get together and refuse to do those ridiculous interviews. The play-by-play announcers ask the same boring questions, and the ex-ballplayer color commentators fawn all over the managers and players because they lack any understanding that they are now the sports media and no longer “one of the boys”. Pathetic. Oh, and they have dumbass guests come into the press box and do more tedious interviews. Then they top it off by having the con known as “user generated content”, where viewers send in questions and comments that are posted or read on air. Hey idiots, they aren’t doing this because ESPN cares what you think about anything, they’re doing it because you are filling their time for them and making their workloads lighter.
Although baseball and football are my favorites, I also really get into hockey. I’m a New York Rangers fan, and the Blueshirts are taking on the New Jersey Devils in the opening round of the playoffs. They’re up 2 games to 1, with Game Four on tap for tonight. Even if they win this round, I have to admit I don’t have much faith that they’ll get any further. The team is maddeningly inconsistent, looking like the best team in the league some nights and getting pushed around by the positively awful Tampa Bay Lightning on others. I hope the team will make some moves to get younger and not always count on bringing in veteran free agents. Signing young goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, a home-grown Ranger, to a 6-year extension, was a step in the right direction.
Being an Asperger, I’m pretty funny about the way clothes feel. Most days I wear t-shirts, and they have to be made of soft cotton to not drive me crazy. Yeah, I know it’s weird, but I’ve always been that way. Sometimes people ask me where I get my soft t-shirts, like if I give them one as a gift. So, here’s an Asperger-approved list of places to get comfy t-shirts:
Tailgate Clothing Company www.tailgateclothing.com
Banner Supply Company www.bannersupplycompany.com
Banner shirts at shop.mlb.com and shop.nhl.com
Brass Tacks shirts and Retro Sport shirts at www.distantreplays.com
Anyone else excited about the new Grand Theft Auto game coming out in a few weeks? My wife is already stockpiling dvd’s to watch and books to read while I make her a temporary video game widow. The Vice City game from the GTA series is on my all-time top 5 games list, and I hope the new one will at least crack the top 20. It’s been too long of a wait to have to be disappointed.
All right, dear readers, everybody have a good night.
Tags: asperger's, elderly, grand theft auto, Hideki Matsui, i hate espn, los angeles dodgers, new york rangers, new york yankees, Publix, vice city
