Never Believe Stuff Your Grandparents Tell You

This is my Grandpa:

As you can see, he is old and Jewish.

This is my Grandma:

As you can see, she is old and opening a Christmas present and therefore probably not Jewish. Let's go with Catholic.

These two wonderful people, who created my mother, have been divorced for about 800 years and don't spend that much time together. It's hard to imagine why, since Grandma is so caring and nice (if a little neurotic) and Grandpa is so controlling and insane. Oh. . .

Anyway, my Grandpa no longer lives in London. Wisely, he decided that it was boring here and moved away. In true old person form, however, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia (Canada's Boca), rather than moving anywhere cool or interesting.

You thought London was small: this is Victoria's entire skyline.

Much to everyone's delight, however, Grandpa is visiting London for a month. He really should have brought his housekeeper with him, not because his incapable of caring for himself, but because he is the kind of person who says "dinner time!" and then goes and sits at the table while other people make him dinner. This kind of behavior is one thing when you pay someone to make you dinner. It is, however, another thing entirely when you are staying at your 91-year-old mother-in-law's house and expecting her to do it. Luckily, grandpa's 91-year-old mother-in-law is pretty pissed off to still be alive, so she doesn't mind taking care of grandpa in the hopes that it will kill her.

I should mention that while my grandpa is pretty high-maintenance, he can also, at times, be pretty entertaining. Just the other day, I was hanging out with him at his 91-year-old mother-in-law's house when he was talking about watches (his retirement hobbies are buying watches, buying electronics, and drinking). Apparently, a friend of his once gave her son a Timex watch. The son wore it to play every sport you can think of, but then he lost his watch and nobody could find it. As it turns out, the watch had gone THROUGH THE LAUNDRY AND THE DRYER but was STILL WORKING!!! Shocked and awed by this, the mother wrote a letter to Timex telling them that they had the most accurate ad in the history of ads. In return, she got a lovely letter and a BRAND NEW Timex watch (in case anybody else in the family needed one). This story took about 20 minutes to tell.

Timex: Takes a licking; keeps on ticking!

After hearing this story, I didn't really think much about it. After all, you're never quite sure how much of what Grandpa says is true. And while I wouldn't say no to a free watch, this story didn't end in me getting one, so I wasn't all that impressed.

But then last night I was over for dinner and laundry at my Grandma's house, and I accidentally washed my chap stick (I tried to explain this to her, but she kept saying she was sorry I washed my "chop stick." She's the best). Upon seeing me ceremoniously throw it away after only two days of use, she decided to tell me a story. Apparently, when my mum was a kid, she had this Timex watch, which went THROUGH THE LAUNDRY AND THE DRYER but was STILL WORKING . . .

At this point I started laughing hysterically, as did my grandma when I explained to her what Grandpa had told me two days earlier. WTF, Grandpa?