I am becoming my grandmother.
I’ve noticed it before, creeping up on me in little ways, little mannerisms. The look I give people when I know they’re full of it. The way I sigh–lovingly and exasperatedly, but mostly lovingly–when Jonno, propped up in bed on most of the pillows, asks me to fetch something just as I’m sliding under the sheets. My willingness to smack reptiles on the head with a garden hoe. Those were some of my grandmother’s most endearing traits, and I’m happy to adopt them. I’m less happy about the thought I had the other day, which involved some pocket change and the Vegetable Man
For those who haven’t had the pleasure, the Vegetable Man cruises the streets of the Marigny, Bywater, and Treme neighborhoods of New Orleans, singing through a megaphone mounted to the top of his truck: “I got bananaaaaaas, I got tomatoooooes, I got cauliflooooower” and so on, depending what he’s got to sell that day. I’m kind of a fruit nut (insert pun here), so I’ll sometimes run outside and flag him down for a couple of pints of strawberries and a few plums, since it’s convenient and his prices are cheap.
Anyway, I was at the hardware store over the weekend (I also have a fondness for caulk), and the cashier was out of fives, so she gave me a wad of singles. And I thought, “It’ll take me days to go through these. I ought to just put them in a little box by the front door so I’ll have money when the Vegetable Man comes by.” And then I thought, “OMIGOD, I HAVE JUST BECOME MY GRANDMOTHER.”
Because that’s what elderly people do, right? They have their little quirks, their little time-savers. They keep all the rubber bands from their morning papers in a Mason jar on the end table, or they save the twist ties from broccoli bunches in a little tray in their junk drawer. Well, in a split second, in one quick, strange thought–one that I’d never had before–I joined their ranks.
I am getting old and quirky. I am already cantankerous. Please do not put me in a nursing home. Not yet.
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