Granny lives in a small community of retired people. Granny-ville, I call it. Everyone has their own little house and most of them can drive and walk on their own. I’m not sure if it is a rule that you have to be old to live there or it just happened that they all congregated in the same spot. It is mostly a bunch of grandmothers, most of the men have long died. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they were drawn to this place by some migratory instinct passed down from generations of grannies.
When I visit I enjoy staring out the window and watching all of these ladies at work, doing their various granny tasks. At any time you can look out and see one slowly watering some flowers or a gaggle of grannies walking down the street, each one inspecting the other’s identical house for some flaw they can talk about. But there really aren’t any, because each granny is so concerned about the other granny passing judgment, that most everything is immaculate.
There is a granny trail where all of the grannies can take a nature walk if they want but I have learned that grannies do not like to be alone or far from their granny house so they have made up a rumor that a wild den of coyotes lives back there. The grannies make up a lot of things, I have come to realize, but the one thing they really like to over embellish is ailments. And grannies have a lot of those.
I recently had the pleasure of observing this behavior in the wild when I had to make a house call to my Granny. She had once again fallen and needed to rest and recover. When something like this happens in a granny community all of the other grannies find out about it instantly. How a group of people that can barely use a computer can disseminate information as fast as these ladies is beyond me. I call it the Granny Internet. When an ambulance or funeral home van is in the area, grannies miles away know where they’re going even before the driver does.
When one granny falls or gets sick, immediately the other grannies go to their refrigerator to see what they can bring to the wounded one. Whether it’s cookies that were bought from a store and then put into a tin so they look homemade or a concoction of freezer burnt meat mixed up into a ‘casserole’, this is what they use for entrance. The quicker the better because the first one with the information becomes, “The Most Powerful Granny”. The person who heard the story first and can then fact check all the other grannies.
My Granny is one of the more powerful grannies in the neighborhood so when she fell this time 3 grannies showed up at her door with gifts in hand the minute we got back from the doctor. I was lucky enough to witness a granny dominance battle. One granny asks my Granny what happened. My Granny tells her, but because this granny wasn’t as powerful as my Granny she immediately jumped in with her own ailment to one-up her. “Oh, you bruised your rib. I broke my rib one time.”
Another jumps in. “It’s not as bad as gout”.
Another. “Gout’s not as bad IBS.”
“Try IBS and Gout.”
“Try IBS, a bruised rib on one side, gout, and a broken rib on the other.”
As this went on and on I noticed my Granny not saying anything. I also knew she was in a significant amount of pain but couldn’t help but detect a bit of a smirk on her face. Then I witnessed her deliver a blow to the other grannies. “The doctor says I’m hurt so bad I have to have family stay with me for two weeks until I get better…” The room went quiet.
There it was. The ace in the hole for any Granny. Family visiting. It supersedes any ailment a Granny could have. So if you are lucky enough to still have a granny, do her a favor and give her a visit or call, so she can be the Most Powerful Granny in Granny-ville, if not for just a day.
Or if you can’t do that, break her rib.