So I’#39;m like six, and my sister is like two, and our parents go out of town for a wedding and decide to leave the two of us with our great grandparents for about the next five years. Well, it was more like four days, but believe me, it seemed like it was much longer than that.
Now my great grandparents lived in a town that was about an hour away from where I lived, called Jeffersonville. I don’#39;t know if you’#39;ve ever been to Jeffersonville, which is the Hopi word for ‘scourge of civilization,’ but it’#39;s kind of a boring place to be, even for a 6-year old. I do realize that I’#39;m taking a risk of offending people from Jeffersonville, but they all have pretty nihility reading habits. (note: if you are from Jeffersonville, nihility means nonexistent).
I also want to stress that this story is completely true, so if you’#39;re that one guy who’#39;s reading this, and you’#39;re thinking to yourself, ‘Did that really happen?’ YES! Why in the world would I ever make anything like this up?
Anyway, we’#39;re there, and my great grandpa was one of those people who watched the Weather Channel for the sake of watching the Weather Channel, and he referred to ‘the news’ as ‘the stories,’ and my grandma was always cooking. She was always cooking, but they decided to take us out to dinner, and this was back when McDonald’#39;s had pizza, and they got me this thing that had mushrooms and all of this other weird crap on it (and I’#39;m a relatively picky eater now, not to mention when I was a little kid), and they got me the biggest pizza that they could. I’#39;m trying to eat around all of the stuff that I don’#39;t like, and my great grandpa (whose thriftiness people in my family still talk about some ten years after his death) is saying to me, ‘What’#39;s wrong? Why aren’#39;t you eatin’#39; your pizza?’
After dinner, we went back to their house and shortly thereafter went to bed at eight o’#39;clock. That was fun. It was the middle of July, and they didn’#39;t have any air on in their house, so when I went to bed I laid down on top of the sheets, and I had my grandma saying, ‘Now, now Josh, you’#39;ll catch a cold.’ In retrospect, I stood a far greater risk of coming down with heat exhaustion than of ever catching a cold. When we were there, I slept in my grandma’#39;s bed. Yeah, don’#39;t ask me why, but they slept in separate beds (like on ‘I Love Lucy’). So I slept in her bed, and she slept on the couch. Once again, don’#39;t ask me why. She was some seventy years older than I was, and I wouldn’#39;t have minded sleeping on the couch, but they had me sleep in her bed.
And I again stress that sleeping on the couch would have been better because I had my grandma waking me up every three hours to make me go to the bathroom. In her defense, I do (I mean did) wet the bed, but getting me up every three hours? Come on. I mean, did she think that I had diabetes or something? The rest of that excursion, and when I now look back on that experience, I always think about the opening monologue in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: ‘The story which you are about to hear is an account of the tragedy that befell a group of two youths … It is all the more tragic in that they were young … They would never have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see during those four days. For them an idyllic summer weekend became a nightmare.’
Sorry, I had to do that.
Anyway, the rest of the stay there was essentially the same as that first day. They took us back home, and my grandpa was, ya’#39; know, old, and as old people often times do, he was a slow driver, and for what I could swear was half of the ride back home, we were driving side by side with a hog truck … in July mind you. Riding with an infant and two elderly people next to a truck full of stinking pigs in a car that had no air on and the windows down on a day that would make Osama bin Laden break a sweat. It might have been the highlight of the entire weekend.
‘#160;
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