I work at a Vietnamese Sandwich shop where we sell a variety of sandwiches, salads, and soup (called Pho).

A regular comes in: an older Vietnamese woman with her two grandchildren aged maybe eight to ten years old, a boy and a girl. The girl sits patiently at the table as her grandmother orders, while the boy is happily munching on food brought in from a burger-and-fries fast food place. We’re located in a mall, and while it isn’t within the food court but rather its own attached building outside the mall, it isn’t uncommon for people to bring in food we don’t serve, so this isn’t an issue.

This customer is usually pretty pleasant when she comes in, if not a little blunt and strict in her demeanor, but she’s usually super nice in her intent, and she once bought me a scarf because she noticed I take the bus to work in the freezing, snowy weather. Today, however, she seems a bit miffed.

Grandmother: “I’ll take two orders of the beef pho, please. One adult, one small.”

Me: “All right! Is there anything else I can get you?”

Grandmother: *Scowls* “No… that’ll be all.”

I silently put in the order with a smile, wondering if she is angry at me for some reason. I notice she’s still hanging around the cash register, but before I can ask if something is wrong, she starts venting.

Grandmother: “My family, we love Pho, you see. My granddaughter grew up with it before our family move here so she will eat Vietnamese food. But my grandson…”

She turns to eye her grandson obliviously eating his French fries.

Grandmother: “Oh, no. My grandson no like our family’s food. I tell my daughter to make him our food, but she complains because we in America now! American…”

She shakes her head and rolls her eyes, looking back at me. I’m a little too stunned at the awkward conversation to say anything.

Grandmother: “So I have to buy him [Fast Food Restaurant] before we come here. He won’t eat Vietnamese food.”

She leans closer, her face serious.

Grandmother: “That’s why he so fat.”

I didn’t get the chance to say anything (not that I could) before she shook her head and walked away, mumbling to herself in Vietnamese.

My grandmother is a little out of touch when it comes to technology. Sure, she has an iPad, but she barely uses it for anything other than looking at news websites and watching Netflix. She’s had her desktop computer for about twenty years now; it still runs XP without any problems.

I recently took some pictures of local wildlife — deer, bears, and a robin’s nest that was made right outside my window — and emailed them to her through my photography business’s Gmail account. After a few days without receiving a reply, I call her.

Me: “Hi, Grandma. I was calling to see if you received the pictures I emailed you?”

Grandma: “I did, but I didn’t open them. I don’t have a Gmail account because I don’t want Google to have all my information.”

Me: “I sent them to your regular email, the one you use to email me.”

Grandma: “Why don’t you go back to using the account you emailed me from before?”

Me: “Because I made that one when I was fifteen years old, and I closed it when I was twenty. I use Gmail now, Grandma, because it’s more professional.”

Grandma: “I still don’t want Google having all my information!”

I gave up and got my mom to email the pictures to her, instead.

I just heard this story from my dad and little sister about my grandmother. Grandma is awesome because she is absolutely a b****; she takes no flak from anyone. My dad talks to her once a week (excluding the time she found out he voted “wrong”) and they have a pretty close relationship.

Apparently, Grandma has mentioned she can’t find any of a specific kind of bagel at the store. Dad, trying to do something nice, decides to order some from [Big Company] and waits for the surprise to be delivered. Every day he checks and they say the order is shipping but it never gets delivered.

Finally, after a month, he decides the bagels can’t be any good by now and to cancel the order. He gets told that they can’t find or deliver his order, they won’t send a replacement, and he won’t be getting a refund. Naturally, he’s pretty upset about it, but after gaining no headway on a solution, he asks my younger sister to help him out.

She does, and after a month and a half, Dad has his refund, but our poor grandma is still without her bagels! [Sister] decides she can just order them from a local shop to be delivered and, with Dad’s blessing, finally gets eighteen bagels delivered to our grandma!

End of story? Nah, that’d be too boring. First off, they were delivered while Grandma wasn’t home, though she got there not long after them.

Grandma: *To Dad* “I almost got ants from those bagels sitting outside! What would you have done if they’d gotten ants in them?!”

Dad: “Uh, thrown them out?”

Grandma: “And four were burnt! Burnt! What place sends four burnt bagels?!”

Dad: “Well, I’m sure they’ll be happy to exchange them.”

Grandma: “I’m not wasting my time or gas going all the way out there! How dare they send me burnt ones?!”

At this point, Dad is already thinking, “Lady! You got fourteen free bagels! Live with it!” He instead tells her:

Dad: “Well, you know [Sister] doesn’t know the area. I guess she thought they were closer than they are.”

Grandma: “Oh, [Sister] sent them? Oh, okay.”

They end the conversation. Grandma calls my sister up.

Grandma: “Hey, I know you thought sending bagels for your father was a good idea but next time, don’t. Just don’t.” 

Dad: *To us* “At least she’s nicer to her grandkids.”

Unfortunately, both my father and his brother have fallen into the hardcore conspiracy theory side of the current health crisis. Meanwhile, both of my grandparents on that side got vaccinated as soon as it was available to them in March, and they are still incredibly upset at both of their sons for their decisions.

While they do allow my father to visit them, they force him to follow the recommended guidelines and don’t let him inside. My uncle, on the other hand, lives out of state, and eventually my Maw-Maw breaks “as he is still [her] son!” and they decide to visit him in July. This is part of the conversation I have with her over the phone after she comes back.

Maw-Maw: “The moment we got there, I swear [Uncle] was trying to piss me off! He spouted some bulls*** about the vaccines making people ‘magnetic’ and then he tried to stick a magnet on me. Thing is, that couillon (fool) pushed it on me so hard that, of course, it stuck! And it hurt, too! So, I grabbed it and pushed it right back into his arm so it stuck and made sure he knew exactly how stupid he was.”

She didn’t tell me much more about how their visit went, but I took this to mean that it didn’t go very well. Gotta love Cajun grandparents, though.

My mom’s face is pock-marked from various medical issues she’s had in her life, and she is humiliated by this. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember, so I never think anything of it. But I’ve always known it’s bothered her.

Her mother was a cruel, petty person. She despised my mother and went out of her way to make sure my mother knew she wasn’t wanted. I lived with this grandmother for years as a child and, later, as her caretaker. Please note that at no time did she ever begin to have ANY age-related mental declines to “explain her behavior”. She was just always a mean person.

Grandmother: “We’re going to do a family photo, [My Name], so you need to pick out a nice dress and do your makeup.”

Me: “You can get me in a dress, but you won’t be getting makeup on me.”

Grandmother: “Well, your cousins will be in makeup! I expect you to be, too! Everyone has to.”

Me: “Mom doesn’t like makeup; it doesn’t sit right on her face. You know this.”

Grandmother: “Oh, bull! She could actually be pretty if she put in any effort! It’s not my fault she’s got those ugly holes in her face, and she knows it!”

Me: “I’d rather have ‘ugly holes’ in my face like Mom than ugly holes in my heart.”

She refused to speak to me for the rest of the day. Win.