So I’ve spent a lot of time recently on the phone with my grandfather (Dad’s dad). I’ve mentioned him before on the ‘blog but now I want to talk about him again. Grandpa is now retired to a small Southern retiree town but during his professional career, he was very successful. At one point, he was a professor at Purdue University and at the end of his career he owned his own business that did something with plumbing (he wasn’t something as simple as a plumber, oh, noooo). In between, he held a number of executive positions. I remember that he was an executive at the company that owned Jolly Rancher candy because everytime I’d buy some at the ghetto candy store down the street from my house I’d think that Grandpa owned Jolly Ranchers.<\/p>\n
His successes enabled him to do some really nice things for our family as well as my Aunt in Illinois. Sometimes, though, it feels he’s more Godfather than Grandfather – you know the Godfather movie poster with the puppet strings? I honestly believe that he feels that, having given these gifts, he can now say WTF he wants about who TF he wants. This is usually just a nuisance but Macaulay\/Bill is graduating from college next month so I’ve talked with him a lot while planning our respective trips to IN. He has managed to keep enough dignity to not insult my other grandfather – who has been dead since I was in the 6th grade (~16 years) but he still manages to get these little zingers in. I don’t want to get into the details because my mother and brother both read the ‘blog and I’d like to spare them.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, my mom said that I was the good one and they (Mom, Dad, Bill) were the bad ones because I still maintain a relationship with my grandfather. Me, I like to believe I’m taking a bullet for my family. I take absolutely no joy in talking to this man. I use the same telephone tricks on him that I use on restaurant managers, insurance claim clerks and Department of Social Services flunkies. Gene reminds me that someday I’ll regret feeling this way about my grandfather, but I just don’t think he understands. He sees the gifts but he wasn’t the one sentenced to 10 weeks in their shithole town.<\/p>\n
I am not being a pampered princess about this, really folks. I am not turning my nose up at the man who, oh Christ, has been so financially generous (but so emotionally unpleasant) because I’m such a bitch or because he denied me a treat when I was 7 or something. Six years ago my eyes were on the prize and I did what had to be done to finish my education and get him off my ass (about that, anyway). The title of this post (which is also a Kate Bush songtitle) is meant to refer to how stretched I feel dealing with both sides of this issue. It’s not a good feeling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So I’ve spent a lot of time recently on the phone with my grandfather (Dad’s dad). I’ve mentioned him before on the ‘blog but now I want to talk about him again. Grandpa is now retired to a small Southern retiree town but during his professional career, he was very successful. At one point, he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-really-deep-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laineyd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laineyd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laineyd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laineyd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laineyd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/laineyd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laineyd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laineyd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laineyd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}