My grandma was something else. Feared by all, she took no s*** in life and was, in a word, iconic.

When I was a teenager, I was at my grandma’s house so I could go swimming at her pool. When I finished, my dad told me to go down to the house and say thank you to my grandma. I went down and saw she was on her back porch smoking a cigarette. I was still in my bikini. She took a long drag of her cigarette and then looked at me.

Grandma: “Ya got nice boobs. Much nicer than your older sister’s, anyway. I remember when she was a little girl, she used to go around telling people she wanted big boobs like your mom.”

She took another drag off the cigarette.

Grandma: “Meanwhile, she didn’t even have little fried eggs yet. “

I was absolutely mortified, and I quickly said thank you and ran up to the pool area where my dad was waiting in his truck to drive me home.

Dad: “Did you say thanks to Grandma?”

Me: “Yes, and we need to leave, like, now.”

This conversation has become seared into my brain because of how out of the blue it was and the choice of words that she used.

A woman comes into our high-end shoe store with her daughter and young grandson and granddaughter. The little girl starts running around, so one of the salespeople approaches.

Salesperson: *Politely* “Please stop running before you hurt yourself.”

Grandma: “Should you be the one telling her that?”

Salesperson: “No, you should, but you’re not, so I have to.”

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My grandfather, who was born in 1915, really liked movies but not anything he thought of as “modern films”. He was also an accomplished and successful chef.

One day, I was watching the second “Indiana Jones” movie at my grandparents’ place and my grandpa came into the living room and asked what I was watching.

Me: “That’s not something you would like. It’s new and also quite violent.”

Grandpa: “Oh, all right, then.”

As he was about to leave, the banquet scene came on. He stopped and started watching. When the eels came out of the snake, he said:

Grandpa: “That’s how we used to serve them.”

He then stayed and watched the rest of the film and rather enjoyed it.

My boyfriend and I have just gotten engaged. We have told our immediate family, and now my fiancé is calling his grandmother. I have met her twice, and she seemed nice but a bit odd. 

Fiancé: “[My Name] and I are engaged!”

Grandma: *Very long pause* “Well, you both need to lay off the sugar.”

My fiancé is overweight but he’s the least overweight member of his family.

Fiancé: “Yes, Grandma. We are thinking of June of next year for the wedding, so fourteen months from now. That way there’s—”

Grandma: “Tell that girl to lay off the sugar or she’ll get the beetus like you!”

My fiancé was recently diagnosed as type-two diabetic. I have been type-one diabetic for decades.

Fiancé: “Okay, Grandma. Is [Cousin] at your house? Can you hand the phone to him if he is?”

Grandma: “If you lay off the sugar now, you might look halfway okay by the wedding if it’s in two months.”

Fiancé: “It’s June of next year, not this June.”

Grandma: “I’ll let my pastor know to expect your call. He’s pretty busy this June, though.”

Fiancé: “It’s in a year, Grandma, at our church.”

His grandmother then hung up the phone. Apparently, she then called my fiancé’s sister to complain about how overweight both of us are and how it would ruin wedding pictures. Since my fiancé’s sister was 200 pounds overweight at the time, she was less than sympathetic!

My grandmother, Oma, is a woman you do NOT want to cross and performed one of the best instances of malicious compliance in my family.

My Opa — her husband — worked for a well-known US telephone company that pretty much had a monopoly fifty years ago, and Oma was a stay-at-home wife with young kids.

Early in their marriage, Opa would call home several times a day to check up on Oma. He came from an Italian-American family and his mother was very controlling. If he called and she was out to market, he’d keep calling every break until she picked up. He claimed that he just wanted to make sure she was okay. This went on for a few weeks until Oma had enough.

One day, she called his office before he could take a break, and his coworker picked up.

Oma: “Is [Opa] available?”

Coworker: “No, would you like me to get him?”

Oma: “No, but please share this message with him. Let him know that I’m going to the grocery store for an hour, so he needn’t call. Then, I will fix lunch for myself and the kids. I’ll need to give [Daughter] a bath after that, because she’s a messy eater. I’ve been constipated lately, so around two o’clock, I plan on sitting on the pot for a while and taking an enema, so if I don’t answer the phone, that’s why. Have him call if he really needs anything.”

Apparently, Opa came home that evening red-faced and never called home to check up on her again.