Detached and Exasperated

Most people call my grandmother Miss Pat.

I call her Cranky P.

She's been miserable as long as I've known her.



No one can huff the way she does. 



She sighs at a losing lottery ticket.

She grunts when she climbs the attic stairs.

She groans when she walks down her creaky hallway.



When the Red Sox lose, they earn a gruff "UH-huh," and her tiny remote slams to the coffee table.

When things don't go her way, she sputters, "WELL!" and tightens her folded arms.

She pronounces the word days as deez, and her stories always begin, "So I sez to Lynda..."



Cranky P is a myriad of unsmiling sounds, but none are family legend like her resounding, wall-shaking, 

"RIGHT, RALPH!"

Which was directed a hundred times a day at her husband. 

She was married to Ralph for over fifty years,

And I think she hated him as long as I've known her.

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