Grandmothers

I had arrived at the pub early although I had no real hurry to be there anyway. I asked for a large glass of white wine and rested my book on the counter. My recently found and crippled umbrella was left down in the floor in the hope that someone would take it later on and gave it the care I wasn’t able to in the short time we spent together. The fact was, it was a really windy late afternoon for London standards and there was nothing I could have done about it.

My friend arrived shortly after my first sip of that crappy chardonnay and asked for a gin and tonic. We were both on our way somewhere else so this would be brief. We hanged on the difficulties of finding a job, well, she did I just concurred and nodded as we went along, like if my father was telling me how hard life is and the need to go to school and achieve. The fact was I had a job remotely related to our area and she did not, I was making comfortable money and she was counting days.  

I don’t exactly know when we deviated into our grandmothers but we did and this for me was a much more engaging subject because I had two of those and finally could discuss something I had a present experience on. She told me how her grandmother had forgotten her birthday and because I know her birthday is on the 25^th of December I asked if she had also forgotten baby jesus’s birthday as well, turns out she did. I concluded with an almost medical satisfaction that she should not take it personally then, she assured me she didn’t. Taking advantage of my upper hand I told her how both my grandmothers had evolved in such different ways. One is now semi-mad although physically fit and the other struggles to move around the couch though can still name the world’s capital cities and her schoolmate’s pet’s. After a series of consensual sounds we both agreed that these were the two options we had to fit in later on our lives, and even argued if it was a matter of choice or bad luck. “Or we should just die before it happens” she said straightening her back as she talked. It was true I said, mimicking her body movement, we should just ended it all before we can’t remember who to call to get us a gun, or even that we had previously decided to ended it all before the shriveling part. That said, it would be absolutely necessary to have a person we could trust and tell about our life changing decision and that when the time came, would end our then becoming miserable existence there on the spot.

That person would have to be there as we aged and keep an eye open for stupid things we might start doing. Although the stupid things we might start doing proved to be a really broad subject and one worth discussing, especially with the person who was going make them stop for good. There will need to be a written agreement with some pretty accurate and pre-established stupid things that might be tolerated and others that could be fatal. Taste would not be a factor for example. Before we could get into details we had to disperse and go about our business, she had to go party and I had to go home.