Did I Just Lose My Marbles? Part I

My maternal great-grandfather was a delightful man.  He was in his late seventies when I came along, and even in his older years he managed to maintain his sharp wit and larger than life personality.  As his first great-grandchild, I had a unique bond with him and adored him. The connection was inexplicably wonderful.  As young kid, he would tease me with the “got your nose” illusion, in which I would respond with a forced laugh thinking does he really think I fall for this shit?  As I got older and became capable of engaging in actual conversations, we would often sit on the front porch swing eating popsicles as he told me war stories along with tall tales of my ancestors.  I was far too young to appreciate them at the time, but how I wish I could hear them again as an adult.  His name was Elza, which I later found out, because he was always “Grandpa Short” to me.  He was given this nickname earlier in life by his friends, as he was barely 5’4’’.   His wife, my great grandma Essie, had a few well organized bats in her dust free belfry. Grandma Essie was the embodiment of obsessive compulsive disorder. I wonder now, knowing she was born in the late 1800’s if she substituted the ritual of obsessively flipping light switches with lighting and blowing out candles three times in a row to avoid impending death.   

The announcement from my mother that we were going to visit them would immediately trigger me to have suicidal ideations.  During the two hour drive, I would sit slumped in the back seat whining and fussing that I didn’t want to go, praying for a fatal accident, just to get me out of having to spend the day with her.

Their house was pristine with nothing out of order.  The yard was neatly manicured and was there to look at, not to walk on.  The kitchen was painted a light turquoise color, which always reminded me of a surgical room.  It was probably safer to have surgery in her kitchen than in a hospital, it was that sterile. If all that wasn’t enough, Grandma Essie had neurotically placed plastic slip covers on all the furniture.  This combined with the Kansas humidity and her lingering phobia from the depression that turning on the air conditioner was an “unnecessary cost” made for a dreadful, sticky, painful day.  At the end of the visit, someone had always left a deep tissue DNA sample behind on the plastic.  I was smart.  I sat on the floor.  By the time we pulled in their drive way, I had this osculation of emotions; anxious to see great grandpa and hoping that at best, someone had robbed them, tied her up in the basement with duct tape on her mouth so she couldn’t run her cake hole all day about how I had messed up her house.  Maybe they just wouldn’t notice she was gone.

Their house had a nauseating old people, freshly brewed coffee, Ben-Gay, glycerin suppository coleslaw stench.  All they had to drink was water.  Water?  Who the hell  drinks water?  What a delightful treat.  And even worse, all they had for me to play with was a large one gallon mayonnaise jar full of 101 glass marbles in it.  I could play with them, but only in the dining room, where Grandma Essie could “keep an eye on me”.  I always wondered what kind of damage she thought I could possibly do with a bunch of glass marbles, except out of sheer boredom shove them up my ass for entertainment.

 One horrific day, while thumping marbles around on the floor in a haze of momentary delirium, I wasn’t paying attention. A blue marble went down into the heat vent. I sat there in sheer terror that she would find out.  I could see her becoming rabid, spinning around like a neurotic dervish flipping her wig if she knew.  As the conversation began to wind down with my parents, I could gleefully see that an end to this torture was in sight. I was ordered (as usual) to count the marbles before putting them back in the jar. That was only after I had cleaned each marble with the wet naps that she stole from Kentucky Fried Chicken. This ritual was followed by setting the marbles on a towel to air dry, before placing them back in the jar.  Even the wet naps had a special drawer in the kitchen where they were neatly rubber banded into groups of five and placed in perfect rows.  I wasn’t allowed to open the drawer, because God forbid, if I used too much force pulling open the drawer the potential existed for some sort of disorder, which would surely activate the apocalypse. 

That day, when she shook her knobby little finger at me and said “There are 101 marbles back in the jar, right?” I did what any other ten year old would do. I lied.  I  nodded “yes”.  As much as I loved my Grandpa Short, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough and I sure as hell wasn’t going to shimmy myself down the vent shaft to find one stupid marble much less be a suspect in the federal investigation that was bound to occur.

The following week, my Grandpa Short passed away.  My parents didn’t say much more than that, all they ever really said was that he was just old and it was his “time”. My mother cried a lot and I felt bad for her.  I was upset because on the last visit I had not spoken much to him or had the opportunity to have some alone time on the porch.  It truly was my first experience with remorse over not appreciating time spent with a loved one and how precious that time is..........

Part II tomorrow.....it's a LONG story...like everyone has time to read the whole story in one sitting.