Introductions

My grandfather is in his late seventies and his nickname, due to my little brother, is Buster. He has a head of white hair and glasses that take over his face, but his crystal blue eyes shine from behind them. He had back surgery when I was young and now he walks like he is the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He is easily angered, flustered, frustrated and once he is any of those he turns as red as an apple and begins huffing and puffing like he is a smokestack. His wardrobe doesn’t go much further than khaki’s, a pair of New Balance sneakers and a sweatshirt – sometimes just a t-shirt. He is springing a leak from his arms, legs, elbows, face from old cuts that have reopened. And Buster has more than just that nickname – my mother finds P.T. (which stands for Pop tart) to be particularly fitting for him. My grandfather is the kind of guy you read about in Nicholas Sparks novels, he’d give you the shirt off of his back and, even though he doesn’t always show it, I’ve never seen a man love his wife so unconditionally.
You see, my grandmother tends to be a pain in the ass. She is one Twinkie away from being considered obese and has more medical problems than you can imagine – gout in her finger so now it’s swollen and it looks like a rock is stuck under her skin, knee problems, ankle problems, feet problems – anything you name she’s got it. So, in a very direct way I’d say that my grandmother is useless around their house. She has short, whitish hair with big glasses and teeth that look like a witch you read in all the stories when you were younger. She can’t walk well, so she can’t clean the house or do laundry because she can’t get up and down the stairs, so my grandpa cares for the two of them.
I know just because Buster cleans the house and does laundry doesn’t mean that he unconditionally loves my grandmother, but he does deal with her on a daily basis and just that alone qualifies him as a Saint in my book. My grandmother hates when attention is not on her and my grandfather tends to that on a daily basis. My grandfather has a retreat in the basement, his version of a “man cave.” He’s got a TV on the top of an old school desk, a couch with a hideous design of browns, yellows and oranges, a chair to match where the dog sits and a refrigerator filled with Budweiser. The moment my grandfather tries to retreat down there, my grandmother decides to call his name and say that she needs something and he needs to come up.
Well, to be honest? Watching my grandfather get flustered is entertaining, along with watching the two of them argue with each other. I think that my grandfather repeats Jesus Christ’s name more times in a single day than God has in His entire lifetime of existence. He swears and yells and turns red and gets all tense and it is pure entertainment. I brought a friend to their house a few weeks ago and for some reason we got on the subject of Michael Jackson. (Now you also need to know that my grandfather is still old-school and racist as hell.) Well, that was it. I made the WRONG comment, completely intentionally of course, and decided to say that Michael Jackson wasn’t black – he was white. The sweat beads started dripping down his forehead and he started stuttering his words and repeating “Jesus Christ” before he came out screaming about black people in this society and he was not white and he just wanted to be white and damn him and all that kind of stuff. My grandmother simply looked at him and said, “you are going straight to Ninja heaven because that is going to be hell for you.” As horrible as it is, I had to laugh. My eyes began to water with hysterics as I laughed at my grandparents and my grandfathers frustration. He then quickly retreated to the basement to down an entire Budweiser before returning upstairs in a calm state.
This blog is dedicated to all the conversations that I have with my grandparents that involved busting my poor grandfathers’ balls. Thanks to my aunt for inspiring it and my little brother for coming up with a creative name!