These Are The Voyages Of The USS Hong Kong Grandma

Posted on October 31, 2016

The designation NCC-1701 is common knowledge, isn’t it? Ah, and what a beautiful ship she is, especially the A version. But have you heard of the EVIL-666. It’s a kind of anti-sister ship, and her captain is my husband’s Grandmother. She’s one tough cookie, let me tell you. And just when you think she hasn’t seen or heard something, she surprises you. Well, she surprises me. If this was ever filmed, it would definitely be sitcom material, only nobody would ever believe it was based on true events.

Okay, true events as I see them. Not that I exaggerate. I might. But only a little bit, and only once in a while. Just not to you. Never to you.

So, after Grandma arrived and overcame her shock at my continued existence, the four of us—my husband and his mother in tow—arrived home and they did pay me a nice compliment in how clean the house was. It’s not that way anymore, but it was when they walked through the door. And everything was wonderfully sedate after 10 pm, and I was still glowing from a job well done…that and the tea debacle I mentioned in the previous blog post.

We awoke the next day for morning tea, which differs from evening tea based entirely on the time of day we steep and drink it. See how that works? My husband chose the tea this time, and Grandma drank it willingly and with a smile on her face. She hates gweilos. Hates them. Well, me. Anyway, Ralph was busy making a mess and I was walking around picking up after him when we heard a very loud thump, then several smaller thumps after the initial thump.

His mother slipped going down the stairs, fell on her bum, and slid down the rest of the way. Fortunately, she was fine, just a tad sore. We know. We checked. Grandma asked what happened, so His Majesty told her “Mom fell going down the stairs.” Now, what would your response be if someone told you someone fell down the stairs? How is she? Is she okay? You’d expect that, right? Well, Grandma looked up at Ralph and asked “How many stairs?”

Not. Making. That. Up.

Ralph decided we’d take his mother and the Grandma to Toronto from Thursday to Saturday as a nice little side trip. I would be allowed to accompany them as the live-in butler. I would be tasked with carrying the bags, being told what to do at any given moment during the day or night, and, in turn, I would be allowed to eat at the table with them. Believe me, that’s a good deal compared to the one I’m usually offered.

Everything went fine too…for the most part. Grandma wondered why we were only there a couple of days and not a week. Because. Because I would run out of butler uniforms long before then. She seemed to accept this explanation. Fracking unbelievable. Other than that, we were fine until on the way back home and stopping off at the Toronto IKEA.

I’m a planner. That’s not secret information, but it may be a character flaw. I collected everybody’s passports so they were all in one place and easily accessible for when we went across the border. And they were locked up in the vehicle when we entered IKEA. Now, if you’ve never been to an IKEA store, you enter, then take an escalator upstairs. It is at that point YOU ARE TRAPPED. How? Because you must walk through at least half the store before you can exit. It is a long, arduous task.

Grandma waited until we were inside the store, and up that escalator before she turned to Ralph and declared “I want my passport.” Most lifeforms would have said “No, it’ll be fine until we go back outside.” Oh, no. No. That didn’t happen, and I had to walk my demure ass all over that f***ing store looking for an exit so I could go outside and get her secure passport, then hand it to her upon re-entering the f***ing store and not telling her where she could secure it in place of where I’d had it.

We crossed the border several hours later, and if you think I didn’t immediately hand her passport back to her THE MOMENT we started driving away from the border guard, well, you’d be mistaken. I did it so fast that my mother-in-law’s head nearly spun. I was THAT fast.

Mum-in-law apparently wanted some peace and quiet Saturday night, because she came upstairs and informed us “She still awake. I give her pill. She sleep now. She sleep for a long time.”

And she did. But not long enough… I know because she woke up this morning demanding tea.

The voyage continues…

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Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the recently re-published novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.