By Car Johnson
My Grandma Mavis is older than my sister’s collection of antique trolley litter. She’s held together by Polydent and support hose, plus a heaping pile of stubborn determination. While most old folks either settle in to house coats and early bird specials, or try to sucker punch the reaper with fast cars and trips to Vegas, Grandma Mavis does it all. She rides her Harley to early bird specials in Vegas, wearing leather pants and a house coat. She even has a tattoo on her back of old ladies playing strip poker.
She’s always been my favorite grandma. Grandma Daisy, my father’s mother, just sat around in her rocking chair, sipping her lunch and croaking at her grandchildren to change her Depends. The only sweets in her house was a bowl of prunes covered in melted laxative chocolates, and the only things to play with were half finished crossword puzzles and ancient and angry cats that slunk around like mangy ghosts.
We’d spend our visits elbow deep in adult diapers, seeking out hiding places for our laxative covered prunes and trying to keep out of the way of kamikaze kitties out for blood. It grew steadily worse over the years as Grandma Daisy started to believe she was a drill instructor and we were her new recruits.
Grandma Mavis was different. She had a disco ball covered in a giant doily and the only thing she asked us to change was the music when the cassette reached the end. She kept bowls of candy and deep fried bubble gum all over the house and always showered us with toys and b.b. guns as soon as we stepped through the front door.
We’d spend our days dancing to disco and death metal, while Grandma Mavis practiced for her tattoo license on the passed out frat boys who had come to party. I still remember the look on one of their faces when he woke up with a heart with the words “Grandmas Rock” underneath.
When I grew up, she let me join her on her “senior benders”, which were a mixture of Hell’s Angels and Sunday tea. I did feel a little weird sitting on a patterned lace table cloth and drinking from a pink china cup, but the fact that we sitting next to a cock fight in Tijuana at the time pretty much made up for it.
I saw the world through the bifocalled eyes of Grandma Mavis during those trips. Crocheting nooses to taunt the players of a backyard fight club, playing strip pinochle with drunken college kids in the back of a bar, and who could forget flower arranging during the running of the bulls? (You try places flower wreaths on a rampaging bull’s horns.) Still the most memorable time was when we traveled cross country, crashing bingo games and other activities at old folk’s homes.
I’d dress like an old man by sticking a white wig on my head and we’d both wrap ourselves in white terry cloth robes I had stolen from a hotel. Then we’d sneak in the front door of a retirement home and wander around until we found an interesting activity. After a few minutes, we would quietly pass around some beers and silly string, then we’d sneak out during the chaos of fifty elderly zombies having a good time.
Most of the times, we got away, but we got caught once. Good thing the nurses of the old folk’s home thought we were residents and stuck us in one of the rooms. (It wasn’t so good that they thought was a ninety year old male.) It was a blast. We started a black market business of Ben-Gay and Viagra, and we taught the old folks the joy of Marylin Manson.
My Grandmother hated it. While she loved her bingo, shuffle board, and rocking out, she missed the open road. I despised it even more. What good was a wild party if it was filled with a bunch of old folks complaining about how the music was too loud? So, we broke out and headed back home, but not before finding a wild frat party to celebrate our freedom.
A few years ago, Grandma Mavis started to grow more and more eccentric. She filled her house with armadillos and dressed them all like Walter Cronkite. She would only eat mint toothpaste and chocolate covered spam and she even decided that she deserved a retirement from bathing and turned her shower into a shrine to Red Skelton.
Gone was the Grandmother who used to read me the daily police blotter and who let me stay up late to watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Gone was the Harley riding, tea drinking, slip wearing rebel who had a beer in one hand and a knitting needle in the other, as she attempted to stab a rent-a-cop when he told her that alcohol wasn’t allowed in the mall.
I tried to talk to her, but she also seemed to think she was Alec Trebek. I posed everything I said in the form of a question, but she screamed her head off and chased me from the house with a bust of Elvis in her hands. A few weeks later, she headed off to one of those old folks homes she hated so much, Sunset Acres.
It took me weeks to get enough courage to visit her (I still had bits of Elvis stuck in my neck) and guess what? There wasn’t a trace of armadillos or mint toothpaste in her room. And she smelled like soap! I asked her what the deal was and she told me her genius little plot.
You see, Sunset Acres was the most docile and sedated old folks home that existed. Grandma Mavis couldn’t a vacation, so a geezer freezer with fifty bingo playing zombies was the perfect place to go for a little bit of sun and relaxation, at least until she unleashed the beer and silly string. It was the perfect scam.
All she had to do was act a little batty once in a while and she could enjoy early meals prepared by the staff, while living it up like a senior queen. And when she pulled her master plot of inciting the old people into wild abandon, it would be time to split, hop on her Harley and head to Vegas.
Of course, I donned my old wig and terry cloth robe and joined her in the biggest upheaval of seniors I had ever seen. They ran through the halls, screaming at the top of their lungs and raising all kinds of hell. It worked out really well, at least until the old folks escaped.
A horde of old men and women, all filled with beer and prune juice, rampaged down the streets looking for love and tapioca. They broke into houses and stole knickknacks and forced whole families to hear old stories about the war and to look through photos of their dearly departed cats.
During all this, Grandma Mavis made her escape. I cheered her on as she sped off into the night, even though it meant I was the one who would have to clean up the mess. (In more ways than one. A lot of the old folks forgot their Depends back at Sunset Acres.) I did it gladly, because Grandma Mavis was the woman who made me the man I am today. Plus, she’d smash me over the head with another Elvis bust if I tried to turn her in.
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