Do You Tell Little White Lies to Help Someone You Love?

We were latchkey kids starting in 1970, when our mom returned to the workforce and we walked home from school on our own. It was a quiet, safe suburb. The biggest risk was in cutting across the lawn of an older neighbor who hated kids stepping on their grass.

Still, my parents worried. Well, my mom worried. Our dad probably wanted us to learn how to fend for ourselves.

My grandmother, born in Slovakia when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, emigrated as a young girl to America; she was one of the kinder souls the world has ever known, and she would call every afternoon to check on us. She wanted to know that we were home safe.

Every day it was the same conversation:

You okay? Yeah Grandma. How was school? It was fine.

Being the dopey kid that I was, I wanted to hurry up and make my Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread sandwich and watch Gilligan’s island. One day, I said, “Grandma, you don’t have to call every day. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Oh, okay,” she said. We hung up.

But something did happen.

It turned out, my mother had recruited her mother to call and check on us. What my ignorant little pea-brain couldn’t understand was that Grandma needed to feel needed, and checking up on us was her way of being part of the extended family.

Many years before, Grandma had had a nervous breakdown during the depression, maybe a stroke, as well—who knows? That generation didn’t go to the doctor, and didn’t trust them when they did. Anywho, she was mostly homebound since that time, living a quiet life in a neighborhood way past its prime. Family was the main thing in her life, after the Cleveland Indians.

In a cruel twist of fate, living in Cleveland, she was a Guardians (nee, Indians) fan. I mean, the Tribe had been alright through the sixties, but by the time she was asked to check on us in the 1970s, the only reliable thing about the Indians was the guy in the bleachers beating a tom-tom. The brightest thing that team had going was their all-cherry-red uniforms. Grandma listened faithfully to every game on the radio.

Meanwhile, her grandkids were her hope and delight. And I told her I didn’t need her.

My mother read me the riot act that night. I called Grandma and tried to get her to keep calling us every day, but it was never the same after that.

Of course this was all my fault, but also my mother should have realized that I needed to be in on the grift. If you were running a game on Grandma—any grandma, not just my grandma—you have to let everyone know the play. I wasn’t just some civilian who wandered into the action; I was a critical piece of the action.

You want to con Grandma into thinking she’s useful and needed, then bring me into the con.

I’ve wandered into my crime fiction brain here, but Mom really made a rookie mistake trusting me to make the grift work. I was the kid who cried at the slightest provocation, and plugged the toilet six mornings out of seven.

There were five of us in a one-bathroom house. The kid who keeps plugging the toilet (me!) is not to be trusted.

My mother just didn’t know how to grift. It’s no wonder that I figured out that Santa isn’t real, and my mother was the Tooth Fairy, and we only went to church for the donuts.

Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…

I’ve started working on the novels again. The instructor of the craft class I’m taking got sick and had “major surgery.” A good reminder that you must work on your passion projects each day because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. Call your friends and tell them you love them; hug your loved ones; and don’t ever let me use your toilet.