I went over to my grandmother's house yesterday, to help her out with cleaning. She was recently in a car accident and broke her heel bone in half, so she's not too mobile right now-- and this is on top of some other health problems she's experiencing. Anyway, while I was there, she said something that made my blood run cold: "Your Christmas present finally arrived. Do you want to try it on?" On Christmas day she had given me $20 in a card that said my gift hadn't arrived in time, so here's some cash instead. (I think she gave my brother and my two cousins, both boys, $20 gift certificates to Best Buy or something.)
Background information: I love my grandmother dearly, but she has always been a... difficult person. For my entire life, at family gatherings of whatever nature, she has ordered me to wait on everyone in our family hand and foot-- whether or not it was appropriate for me to do so at the time. Like, for example, if we were at someone else's house. Sigh. She did it at Thanksgiving at my uncle's house and Christmas at my mom's house, when I was already running ragged from helping out. I swear to god, the woman pulled me away from homework once to make sandwiches for my brother, cousins and an entourage of assorted friends. About 8 people, all of whom would much rather have made their own damn sandwiches. She never asked anyone else to help with anything, ever-- even my cousins, normally complete shits, would remark on how much she seemed to think I was the Family Slave.
About 3 years ago, she gave me what *would* have been a very sweet present if it hadn't been so hideous or if it wasn't for the fact that she gave EVERYONE ELSE really cool polar fleece vests. It was a night shirt with a picture of two horse heads on it-- entirely appropriate for someone the age of, oh, let's say 8.
And lest I sound ungrateful, I did appreciate the thought: she wanted to give me something a little more personal than what she gave the boys and my cousin's wife.
Now I'm sure you can imagine my mounting terror... she points to a shirt that I had mistaken for one of her own, an old-lady sweat shirt with a white scalloped-edge polo-shirt style collar on it. You know what I'm talking about? The reeeaaallly ugly old lady sweatshirts with a floral design or something like that on the front, and a hideous collar to boot? Something you would have seen on one of The Golden Girls? It was pink. It had pink flowers across the chest. And it was
awful. So she says "Do you want to try it on, and if it fits take it and just
give me the $20 back?"
I am damned good at schooling my features to not show any reaction, but THANK GOD that my poor granny's eyesight is not what it once was because I'm sure I did not do a very good job. I mumbled something and skedaddled out of the room to get the hell back to scrubbing the kitchen, but I knew it was inevitable... Before I left, she insisted that I try it on. So I did, hoping against hope that it would be too small. Alas, no, it fit okay. My mother was there with me and the look on her face... Jesus.
So of course my grandmother is saying "Oh, that looks darling on you. Do you like it?" GOD. I hate lying, I really, really hate lying, and I am not exactly fully capable of delivering a whopper when I'm doing a deer-in-headlights impression. So I think I said something about it being cute but "not exactly my style." She looked a little crestfallen at first but brightened when I said I'd keep it. She forgot to ask me for the $20 back though. My mother had excused herself from the room and I heard some suspicious muffled sounds. She later told me that she viewed it as a "fucking trainwreck that I couldn't do anything to stop."
So what did I DO with the hideous thing, you ask? I folded it neatly and put it in a plastic bag and buried it under a mound of shoes in my closet. And it's going to stay there til I attend my grandmother's funeral.