by Trent Rosser
When I was younger, I gave my family hell. That's right, I was not the "good little angel" that I claim to be. Up 'til the day my grandmother passed away she pointed with all her fingers. Not just one fingers and the fist closed, no all fingers were pointing at you, including the thumb. I blame my brother and myself. I will take responsibility. When she started pointing at us and getting on to us about something (we were in trouble a lot), she would start pointing at us. We would stop her in mid sentence and tell her, "Grandma, you know when you point 1 finger at us, you have 3 pointing back at you!" She would look at her hand and then point at us will all her fingers and go right where she left off, scolding us for something that we did. Every now and then, I catch myself pointing with all my fingers and not just one.
Now, my other grandmother was a very short lady with hearing aids. We tortured that woman. We would go up to her and mouth something until she turned the hearing aid all the way up. Then we would repeat what we were mouthing at the top of our lungs. Then she would have to turn them down again. She should have killed us. It would have been a justifiable homicide. I remember my mother and my aunt sitting her down to try to tell her that her hearing is not so good. They were trying to break it gently due to the fact that even though she was only 5 feet tall, she could be very mean. They sat her down at the dining room table and started talking about how good the house was looking. My mother looked at her and asked, "Mother, have you thought about getting a hearing aid?" That little lady's face turned dark red and she jumped up and sternly said, "I don't need no damn maid!" Needless to say, she had hearing aids very shortly after that.
One of the things that my wife and I don't quite agree on is guns. I like them, she does not. So you can imagine my surprise, and fear, when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she said, " I want a hand gun." When those words came out of her mouth, I immediately stopped typing and looked at her with a fear like no other. There was silence. I wondered what I had done wrong and when she was planning on shooting me. When she saw the fear in my eyes, she asked what was wrong. I cautiously asked, "What do you want a hand gun for?" Her reply eased me enough to relax a little. "I want my hair done, not hand gun! Hair done! Jeez, you need a hearing aid!" I replied, "Gotcha. Your hair done. But why do we need a maid?"
So this Thursday as you are with your family eating a Thanksgiving meal, take a look at your family and be thankful for them. They are the ones that gave you the good traits. Yes, they also gave you some bad traits, but it is like life. There is some "give" and there is some "take". Be thankful and smile and laugh with them, even if Uncle Joe is passed out on the couch passing gas. Or when cousin Jason ask to "Pass the ham" and I point at him with my entire hand and say, "We don't have pickled spam!".
