On Why I Hate Old People . . .

I've given this blog a provocative title in honour of my older brother, who bluntly informs my grandmother that he doesn't like old people (whenever she laments that he doesn't visit her at least seven times a week). In truth, I do like the elderly, and I love one in particular.

My last remaining grandparent is a character. She can be trying at times: she is obsessed with how much money I have in my bank account (my answer is now the standard "ten dollars"); she is obsessed with every bite I injest (my response now to her incessant, "Eat. Eat. Eat," is that I am so full that another bite will result in an illness of the violent sort, and wouldn't that be a waste of food?); she cannot waste food (she will pick up any scraps, be they on the table or floor, and even served the leftovers of a meal that left 13 guests incapacitated).

However, my grandmother's faults pale in comparison to her virtues. She is generous to a fault: she has recently acquired a vague (albeit incessant) compulsion to aid the "poor lepers" and will write a check to any charitable organization that mails a fundraising letter. Somehow, she is convinced that she has been singled out in a very personal way to support these worthy causes--for why else would organizations send a letter with her name specifically printed on the envelope? Her heart aches at the thought that the staff at the United Way will be disappointed should she fail to respond.

Despite the years that weigh her down physically, my grandmother has the energy of a toddler and the social appetite of a 16-year-old. While staying there one night, I awoke at 4:30 a.m., heart pounding, to a loud banging noise upstairs in the kitchen and my grandfather's angry shouts. Dearest Grandmother had decided to hammer some bones into a soup pot, and the dead of night was as good a time as any to complete this task.

She is much like a teenager in other matters, especially when engaged in the dramas unfolding around her: the elderly lady so fastidious that she empties the toilet water by hand when cleaning the bathroom; the things the "Speckdame" has said and done; the homosexual neighbour who is a 'good' man despite his sexual proclivities (he does like her strudel kucken, after all). She has even been known to follow prostitutes to better understand their mysterious business practices.

My grandmother has an endearing way of confusing English words. "Grand Marnier" is called "Grand Manure." The word "faculty" is pronounced much like a common swear word. And when a lawyer friend of hers introduced her to a "prosecutor," my grandmother could not understand how such a dignified lady could sell her body.

I like old people. Whenever I receive junkmail, I think of my grandmother. Whenever I am tempted to listen in on other patrons' conversations in a restaurant, I thank her for her genetic contribution. And whenever I see a leper, I refuse to turn a blind eye out of respect for this soft-hearted, compulsively generous lady who is old only in body.