Ben Vs. The Old Ladies Vs. Dragon Ninja

So it's 5:30am Saturday morning, and I'm listening to 'Mr Blue Sky' by ELO at loud volume with headphones on. I had just downloaded the song for appraisal because of the excellent use made of it in the trailer for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (a movie I look forward greatly to seeing ASAP; Charlie Kaufman rocks), and it's a pretty cool song, if somewhat weird in its second half. Anyway, I was listening to the song for the third or fourth time and Mum (who had arisen to go to the bathroom) walked up to me unheard and unnoticed and tapped me on the shoulder and I just about had a heart attack, and then she pointed out I should get some sleep, as I had agreed some time ago to assist her in old lady freighting duties in the afternoon. So I went to get some, but not enough, for sure enough Mum hauls me out of bed after about 5 hours for my duly agreed upon 'going to help move an old lady around' assistance. My great Auntie Marge (my Grandad's sister) who is into her 90s now was to go visiting my Grandma this afternoon. This set of circumstances might not seem to require my manadatory attendance, except that A) I hadn't seen Grandma in a while and wanted to, and B) Auntie Marge is one of your Type 2 little old ladies.

As we all know, there are your two basic types of little old ladies. There is your Type One kind like my Grandma, who as a typical Type One weighs about as much as two or three sparrows combined, and eats slightly less. Type One little old ladies have backs that go up in a straight line and then shoulders that go forward at right angles, so their head can be positioned naturally at about belly-button level. They walk about the place on their legs which you can put your fingers around, typically with the aid of a stick, looking like strange little garden gnomes or retired hunchback bell ringers who will in all likelihood be blown away over the rooftops in the event of a stiff breeze coming up. However, this doesn't seem to happen, and they sort of persist, turning up all over the place, seemingly using some sort of universal 'slow and steady wins the race' principle to marvellous effect. Even more miraculously, they do this even as they shrink before your very eyes. Keep a close eye on a Type One little old lady, and much like looking carefully at the minute hand on your watch and perceiving the movement, you will see them grow tangibly smaller. This is the Type One little old lady.

Auntie Marge, however, is no Type One little old lady. She falls directly into the Type Two category. Type Two little old ladies have an upper body that most closely resembles one of those upside down microwave instant puddings that has just been emptied from the bowl onto your plate. From beneath this jolly mass typically protudes two stubby little legs that seem to only go as high as the knee, which appear to have been stuck on the bottom as some sort of afterthought, almost as a begrudging token admission that legs are what humans use to get around, and it would be a lot more convenient for everyone concerned if these pudding women could wobble-float down the street like they were intent on stopping Pac-Man. It would certainly be convenient for Auntie Marge, because her legs have recognised the silliness inherent in the whole scenario, and have largely chucked in the idea of doing their job of keeping her up. So while her legs aren't utterly not functional, practically they are, and she's pretty much confined to a wheelchair, which she accepts with good grace.

By now it may be becoming slightly more clear what my task in the whole affair was. No? Well, Grandma's house is without wheelchair access, so my task was to help Mum (who is shaping up for Type Two, I reckon) hoist the choclatey self-saucing goodness that is Auntie Marge into the house. First though we had to take Grandma shopping, which is a task in itself.

Grandma takes a number of medications for a number of ailments, not the least being asthma. She has Prednizone on a regular basis which is a preventative steroid, and good, in that it helps her asthma a lot better than did the well intentioned but largely useless 'good old days' method used when she was a little kid some 75 years ago, which from what I can gather involved slapping a mustard poultice on her chest and exclaiming 'why isn't this condiment that we are applying to her skin opening her bronchi any, damn it?' However, one of the side effects of regular Prednizone use is that she gets very thin skin, almost like paper, which means that she bruises and cuts very easily. This has been illustrated a lot of times, but perhaps none more spectacularly than a few years ago when some clot ran into the back of her legs with a shopping trolley at the supermarket, and messed her legs up pretty good.

Now this was probably a pretty unlikely and unlucky occurrence (who rams someone with a shopping trolley - honestly?), but this has not prevented Grandma and indeed Mum from remembering it well, and taking care to learn from the lessons of history. And thus it is that whenever I am shopping with Grandma, my task is to hover directly behind her as she pushes the trolley along, much in the manner of Biggs and Wedge forming a defensive screen for Luke as he shoots down the trench towards the reactor shaft. It is my serious and sacred duty to run interference as Grandma locks (very slowly) onto the string beans, and if the sacrifice is demanded of me, to receive the full brunt of Darth Vader's shopping trolley as he closes in from the rear.

Despite my presence behind her though, Grandma still regards the supermarket as something of a danger zone where trolley hooligans could strike at any time (like falling dolphins). So whenever she stops anywhere, she always makes sure she gets her back well up against a wall or shelves, with her own trolley now acting as a deflector screen switched to double front. She tends to spend a bit of time in this position, so the actual shopping process consists of her going slowly down the aisle with me running cover at the back, and then assuming a defensive position at the end somewhere while I stand by on combat air patrol. Then Mum has to sort of head out on picket duty to actually retrieve the items Grandma wants to buy, and return with them to our position of strength. Sometimes though, when Mum has been a while, like longer than 15 seconds, Grandma starts getting a bit fidgety. She asks questions like 'Is Mum going to be able to carry 4 packets of cat food, Benny?' and despite my assurances, she normally makes a command decision, and decides that it's time we take the flagship to where the action is. So I drop back to defend again, and she sets out to find Mum. This done, Mum will put stuff in the trolley, Grandma will back into a corner again, wait, and then follow Mum again, and so on. This process continues until we have traversed every aisle in the supermarket.

Eventually having filled the trolley with the requisite materials, we were served by one of those weird bottle blonde 50 plus women that is super cheery in a weird way about absolutely everything. Her personality (indeed, her mere presence and status as a human being) were more than enough catalyst for Grandma to launch into her usual spiel about her two wonderful daughters and her six lovely grandchildren. This would be unremarkable in itself, except that in the course of the (more enthusiastic than usual - super cheery about EVERYTHING) polite nodding and smiling that the woman was doing in response, she said 'yeeeEES?' in a questioning way in the precise manner of 'Weird Yes Man' from The Simpsons. I barely repressed a snigger, so 5 seconds later, when she of course followed up the questioning 'yeeeEES?' with the confirming 'yeeeEES!' I had no chance whatsoever, and burst out laughing, which got some strange looks. Damn, don't these people watch television?

So it was then back to Grandma's house (taking the precautions necessary to avoid the Big Bad Wolf en route, of course)while Mum went to get Auntie Marge from St Barnabas (I think) hospital and rest home, where being a Catholic, she gets to hang with the nuns, who are all very nice, and look after her in tremendous style for free, making other rest homes I have been in look silly really. While they were still coming, I had a chance to rake some leaves, and have a look at the new kitchen paint job at Grandma's the cousies did a wee while ago, which is basically white, only with the cupboard doors (of which there are many) all painted (at Grandma's request) this colour. Mmmm, 'spearmint'. This has had the disturbing and psychologically confusing effect of making stepping into Grandma's kitchen like visiting the school dental nurse. So my childhood memories have been messed up a bit there, oh yes.

Anyway, Auntie Marge came along with her friend Joyce from the rest home (Type One). Joyce just turned 70, and has lived her ENTIRE LIFE at the convent. But not as a nun, oh no. Instead, she was dumped on them as a baby, in fact probably being some priest's illegitimate child. So she has NO family. And was raised by NUNS. And has lived for 70 years at the same CONVENT. Holy freaking crap. Unsurprisingly, she is a bit weird. She has trouble talking and can be pretty hard to understand. And is a wee bit senile. And is a kleptomaniac - she just picks people's stuff up at the home, and hides it in wee piles. Nobody holds it against her though, because she's a nice old lady, and can't help herself, and the stuff always gets returned, and she's lived 70 YEARS IN A CONVENT, for God's sake - but nonetheless I had to keep an eye her while other people were making cups of tea, so she wouldn't, you know, steal a bunch of Grandma's things.

So while I'm on senior citizen Crimewatch, I try striking up a conversation.

ME: How are you, Joyce?
JOYCE: (Barely audibly intelligble) Good! I know you! Where have you been?
ME: Er, haven't been to the home for a while, last time would be Auntie Marge's birthday.
JOYCE: That's right, Margie's birthday! I had a birthday.
ME: Oh yes? How old were you?
JOYCE: 70! We're going on a train to Greymouth in July!
ME: Er, oh yes? Who with?
JOYCE: Do you know Andrew?
ME: No, I don't think so.
JOYCE: Do you know Vera?
ME: No.
JOYCE: Do you know Elsie?
ME: Um, no.
JOYCE: Do you know Rita?
ME: (shake head)
JOYCE: Do you know John?
ME: (Nodding and smiling, finally) Hmmm, maybe? (Not knowing him from Adam.)
JOYCE: (a great deal of generally non-understandable excitement)

Mum, Grandma and Auntie Marge arrive in the room.

MUM: How are we getting on?
JOYCE: Your son knows John!!!
GRANDMA: Mmmm?
JOYCE: Your grandson knows John!!!
AUNTIE MARGE: Oh, do you know John, Ben?
JOYCE: Your grandson knows John!!!
ME: Er...met him once...at a thing, um, mumble mumble...
JOYCE: He knows John!!!

Mercifully, the outbursts of 'he knows John!' grew less frequent, and there was time to listen to more of the conversation. Now Auntie Marge, in her 90s, is as sharp as a tack, relatively speaking, much more so than my Grandma for example. She will be more than happy to tell you where the Crusaders went wrong this season, or why my cousin's ex-boyfriend is a cad, or whatever. She is excellent. Even though she is well with it though, she has the gift of accidentally humourous conversation, like many old ladies, esepcially in groups. Today's example:

GRANDMA: And Alana is going back to university, which is good, because I was a wee bit worried.
AUNTY MARGE: Yes, that is good, because I'll tell you one thing that gets a lot of people concerned, and that's the petrol prices.
GRANDMA: Yes! Terrible.
JOYCE: Your grandson knows John!!!

So after an hour of this it was time to reload Auntie Marge into the car (she was pretty keen on my idea of taking her to the top of the stairs and then just giving her a shove and seeing how she got on, but Mum spoiled our fun), frisk Joyce for valuables or shiny things (not really, but sometimes happens apparently) and see them off. And so we were waiting for Mum to return, and Grandma asked me the question that she always asks me, which is 'when are you going to get a nice girlfriend'?

Well. I didn't have an answer at the time, but I think I do now.

It's 3:44am folks, and I suspect that all is right with the world.

And then to conclude the story, Grandma kicked the ARSE of the Dragon Ninjas. Cos' she is a legend, and knew they weren't nuttin' but a bunch a punks that hadn't no business in her 'hood.

Word.