Reflections, My Grandparents: Part IV

As I said before, you didn't piss off my grandma. Her Look could kill a man at 50 paces. She was scary, in a warm, cuddly, grandma way. One of the things that you could do to irk grandma was, well, to do something stupid. My cousins and I pissed grandma off often enough.

It was rare that my army uncle came up to visit. He and grandpa didn't really get along. But I was always so happy when he did. He was one of my favorite uncles. He was also the uncle who "taught" my mom to ride a bike. He had two kids: T and M (protecting the innocent here). T was the oldest, 2 years older than both M and me. M was only a few months older than I was. You had to pity him, though, because he was tortured by us two girls. I was the youngest, but the bossiest. I'd some how managed to convince M that I was older than him and, therefore, he had to do as I said. (I managed to keep this charade up all of the way up until we were 17. Damn, I'm good.) He didn't always comply, as exhibited in this story.

When they were there, I got to take allergy medicine and play outside. It was fun. I got to play with the cats and dogs and everything. But, being children, we had no attention span and would quickly grow bored. The details are blurry, but that must've been how things happened. Somehow, M got it into his head that we should all shove our heads through the iron railing on the front steps.

Now, I knew that this was a bad idea and managed to get out "I don't think.." before he did it. And got stuck. T took this chance to poke at him a whole lot because he was otherwise occupied and unable to retaliate. He started screaming and that's when grandma came around the side of the house. It was almost like a western high-noon shoot out. Everyone froze, time slowed down. I was terrified. I saw T run for the barn even before I heard grandma's "What are you doing?!" That's when I blurted out "I told him not to! I told him!" before running away around the other side of the house. T and I had a better chance if we separated. I hid near the back porch. I heard lots of screaming, from both M and grandma.

Later, when I saw M, all puffy-faced and red from crying, his head all greased up, I whispered to him "That's why you don't stick your head through the railing." And then ran before he could get me.