Start with a song

Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go! The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through white and drifted snow. Over the river and through the woods, now grandmother’s cap I spy. Hoorah for the fun. Is the pudding done? Hoorah for the pumpkin pie. These are the words to a traditional American Thanksgiving song. If you listen below, you will actually get to hear me sing them. Whether or not that’s a plus you’ll have to decide for yourself.

I do understand that much of my world-wide audience most likely won’t know this song, and not understand some of the references. That should be okay, because I’m only using the song as an example of a growing concern in my community which I’m sure will translate, not only across the world, but to all planets with semi-intelligent life, like ours.

Take it into space

You doubt that this blog had transcended space and reached the stars? Well, distrust no more. You may not believe this, but daily I get strange, and unintelligible comments that must be from other places. They have a common word of greeting, “Cialis”, and often say the obscure term, “Viagra”. I think that one must be an article because it’s used so much. There’s an oft used phrase, “Mammary Augmentation”, which I suspect is a compliment, due to the fact that all off-world folks seem to want one.  I sometimes wonder how much they appreciate my stuff, because sometimes they seem want something different, using the English words, “Member Enhancement”. Of course, I could be mistranslating this. I never took space languages in college.

Perhaps some explanation is in order

All this being said, let me get back to the song. First of all, it’s dated. You may need to go over a river and through woods, but you are much more likely to take a car. Maybe a train, or plane depending on where grandma lives. Sleighs are almost definitely out. Why? Because in the USA, Thanksgiving is at the end of November, and at that time ninety percent of the country hasn’t seen a flake of snow yet. In fact, much of this country still considers snow a form of evil spirit from the sky. If seen, they close the whole city, and huddle in a corner trembling to await the apocalypse. No sleighs here. Horses yes, but they’re used elsewhere.

Next, cars are getting better and better, but as of yet they don’t know the way to grandmas. Enough said. Of course, with self-driving cars, I sure they’ll soon be a sad country song where some poor cowboy has to morn that not only his wife and dog left him, but his truck wandered of as well. Some of those guys really have it bad, but I’m getting off topic.

Lastly, we have grandmother’s cap. This assumes she wears on which I’ve never seen. Also, that she is outside. Equally unlikely, since we are questioning whether or not she is finishing the pudding. She’s in the kitchen. You would not see her cap unless you were looking in a window. That’s called ‘Peeping’ and it’s illegal.

The stuff they really don’t want you to know

My point is this simple song about grandma is all a pack of lies. It’s even worse than that, grandparents themselves can’t be trusted. Where I live there’s, a saying printed on shirts all over the place, “What happens at Grandpa’s Stays At Grampa’s” This obviously means, my children do things at grampa’s that I’m not supposed to know about. What could this be. For example, my mother had a very low paying job and yet always seemed to have ready cash on hand. Could it be, her and my kids were planning and executing bank robberies while I was away? It makes you think. Speaking of executing, I’ve seen those movies where CIA operatives go deep under-cover and are called out for special missions. Maybe my mom was an assassin before I was born. Is she training my kids to use a sniper rifle instead of baking cookies?

It wasn’t this extreme, but my grandmother told fibs to my mom all the time. “Have five more cookies, we just won’t tell your mom. Remember don’t tell your mother we went to that movie she forbade you to see. We’ll say it was the Disney one.” My grandpa had the best one. “Now I know you’ve been driving that tractor for five years, and that your mother said not to. Well, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

I tried to ignore the inevitable

Of course, when I was a kid, this didn’t bother me at all. It was great to have so many secrets. When I was parenting my young children, I was frankly just too busy to think about the subject. However now that they are older, I am finding things which shouldn’t be in my house. I’ll ask my son where this toy came from, and all I’ll get is that grandma got is for him years ago. They even tried to slip a guinea pig past me. My daughter came home from grandma’s one day when I wasn’t home. I found the cat trying to get into her room the next morning. When I opened the door, she had a million-dollar setup in there. I asked her about it and her only answer was that grandma and grandpa bought it for her last year. I was supposed to believe that there had been an animal, I’m allergic to, in my house, for nine months, and my cat who has a nose for blood just noticed it as well as me. Not Happining? I’ve often said I’m an idiot but I’m surely not that big of one.

The thing that’s really bothering me about this, is that my children are of an age. They have boyfriends and girlfriends, will possibly soon marry, and I may have grandchildren. I’m sure it’s coming in a few years. I’m not a good liar. I’ve lived my life with complete integrity, unless it was absolutely convenient. I can’t think of one falsehood I’ve ever told. This is true. I can think of lots of them not just one, but this is beside the point. The point is I taught my children to be truthful and when I become a grandparent, I’ll have to up my dishonesty game a hundred-percent just to maintain tradition. I mean it sounds fun, but my moral compass just went right out the window.

But this reporter has to tell the truth

Once again, I’m entering a phase of life where there’s no instruction book. If my grandparents were still around, I would ask them what drove them to be so deceitful with my parents. The only thing I can think of was that my mother was a horrible teenager. The more I’ve experienced teenagers the more I want to see them suffer. As torturing your children is not accepted in most areas, which is unfortunate, it must be that parents can legally abuse their children by spoiling the grandchildren they produce.

This would have made a great doctoral thesis if any of my children wanted to be a doctor. Sadly though, none of those idiots do.

But now I know how to get back at them!