You might remember that I nicknamed Adam’s paternal grandmother “Bad Grandma” several years ago. I had not yet met her, but I had heard enough stories from family members to coin the name. Adam’s father enjoyed the tales of Bad Grandma until he heard ME use the term. After that he was offended and upset. Because I’m a fucking whore and his mother is The Virgin Mary.
Bad Grandma is famous for her gifts. One year she gave Adam a blanket and explained to him the amount of time and effort that she put into hand-crafting it. Adam found a tag on the blanket, from a retail store. Bad Grandma not only gives bad gifts, but she is the type of person that will visit your home and ask about the gifts. She wants to see them on display or in use. Adam’s father and stepmother carefully set out her gifts when she visits, which thankfully is not often because she lives in Utah. I don’t play that game. If you give me shit, I’m going to take it back to Goodwill, throw it back in the trash, etc.
We had dinner with Bad Grandma, and Adam’s father’s family tonight. It was mercifully short, and out at a restaurant where we could quickly flee when Egg’s bedtime loomed. At the beginning of dinner Bad Grandma sat next to me and told me that she had something for Egg. It was a book that had belonged to Adam when he was a small child, and Bad Grandma had “tucked it away” until today. I was suspicious, as Adam’s mom seemed to have all of Adam’s old things. Many of Adam’s books are now in Egg’s bookshelf.
When I opened the gift bag containing the treasured book, I noticed two things: it smelled like it was old enough to be Adam’s childhood book, and it was a board book. It was a plush board book, and appeared brand new even though it smelled BAD. Chicken had board books when he was a toddler, but I was fairly certain that they had not been around when Adam was. I’m pretty awesome with the Google searching, so even though there was no title page I began to search for the book.
Minutes later, I found this at Amazon. “Mandy Monkey” is a plush covered board book that was first published in March 2004. Now, I may kid Adam about how young he is but he’s not THAT young. So I’m sitting here with a stinky used* book that definitely did not belong to my husband. My super tender preggo feelings are hurt. I don’t like it when people look me in the face and lie. So tell me, innernets: Why did Bad Grandma lie? (There is a poll embedded in this post.)
*I have no problem with used or second-hand items. Egg has many toys and clothing items that have been handed down to him or purchased gently used. This is okay! I like getting the most use out of things that are already cluttering up our planet, as opposed to buying new things. Unless the things are grossly dirty (and unable to be washed), or smell like ass (and unable to be washed), or for new babies and appearing to be covered with more germs than an elementary school.
I really feel for you – what a shitty thing to do! Though as usual, you’ve used your blogging genius to turn a nasty event into something hilarious. Unfortunately your poll was already closed, but my vote is for “compulsive liar” because I have a sister that does much the same thing, spouting lies like she thinks she’s in a Victorian Romance novel, faking accents with ME HER SISTER for God’s sake, etc. She should get together with your grandma. They’re just nuts.
I had a lot of trouble deciding between option 3 and option 4. Eventually I went with option 3, because it really does sound like she puts some EFFORT into these lies, and does it CONSISTENTLY. She doesn’t JUST imply or JUST lie, she pulls people aside and gives details. But that started making me lean toward option 4, because I was thinking, “Does she maybe WANT someone to smile beautifully while whispering in her ear, “You and I both know that’s a total lie, so why don’t you save it for a family member who’s willing to pretend to believe you out of misplaced respect, instead of wasting it on someone who’s a little unstable and might suddenly blurt things out in public?”
Just plain crazy….
Bad Grandma is delusional, but you probably already know this.
With crazy people who believe everything from their own mouth, you can only fight it with more crazy. No matter how you badly you want them to see how ridiculous they are, you will only remain the one in the wrong.
I try to distance myself from people like this because they make my brain hurt. If I have no choice about it, like my last living situation, then I find I best to improvise (make shit up). My conscience feels okay with fabricating equally absurd lies in retaliation of crazy person talk.
For the smelly book, you could say that one of your cats had sex with it (or something equally ridiculous). Just a thought.
I thought all grandma’s gave weird and mostly un-useable or unuseful presents. Mine always did. Granted mine didn’t usually lie about it but the gifts tended to be a bit cheesy.
I’d guess that it’s something to do with wanting to do something good and actually coming to the point where she does believe her stories. For instance she saw the book somewhere thought it was cute and stashed it, later to find it and not remember where it came from so it must have belonged to Adam and oh how you would love to have that for his kids. Of course I tend to be overly optimistic about shit like this too. I do think Jeremy’s advice is good though.
OH! OH! Guess what – we were given that book as a gift, too!! But here’s the thing. It was given to me by a good friend, and I know it was new – but ours was kinda smelly and the fur was weird, too. So it’s very possible that these books just ARE that way.
(ours went to Goodwill, btw. I couldn’t handle the funk.)
Egads. I don’t get why she’d lie in first place.. maybe I’m just dense tonight.
That’s totally lame though. I’m not into confrontation as you know.. but I think I’d bring up the fact that TB was not a toddler in 2004!!
Bah. Lame Grandma…
More family drama. Precious !!!
The older I get, the more odd the stories get. People have their eccentricities, and for better or worse, sometimes we have to allow people theirs. I once had an aunt that was eccentric, she would give us presents as kids that kept us talking for weeks after and for years after that, every time a holiday came around.
Sometimes people do things for the strangest reasons, and maybe they think that they are doing a good deed, when we can clearly see through it. Is it really worth the energy to feel upset or insulted what she did?
These are perfect teachable lessons, that we can take something away from. Sometimes we have to turn the other way when things like this happen. Old people are funny in their own way and grandma has her foibles. I wouldn’t get your panties into a knot over it. You know better.
But for the grace of God. You could be her.
Jeremy