Granny Roasting, Hillibilly Style

I'm in a blah mood. 
I get up, go to work, come home and - blah.
All of it.
Is this what they call a "rut" and who are "they" and why are they naming the blahness that is my life.  
The one shining beacon of light is the fact that my grandmother's birthday is coming up this weekend.  
We're having a little party for her...
"We're going to roast me at the party.  Call everyone and tell them to write stuff down so that we can roast me.  But it's your idea, ya'hear!"  my granny told me over the phone last Saturday.

This is the VERY rough draft of what I've come up with so far:


When Nan-nan called me up on Tuesday night and said “hey – tell everyone that you want to ‘Roast’ me on Saturday – but it’s your idea ya’hear!” I had no choice but to gather the troops and demand a heckling of my grandmother to beat all hecklings.   Although to call anything related to Nan-nan a “roasting” is a bit of an oxymoron as we all know that it’s more of deep frying.  With butter flavored Crisco.
So, Nanners, this Transfat is for you:
Memories:
1.    At an age when everything I touched and saw went in my mouth my grandmother’s go-to toy was a large coffee can of pennies.  And it worked.   I never choked on them – but I did get really good at stacking them and spinning them for hours on end while Nan-nan talked on the phone about lots of people named “That-there.”
2.    When the pennies became boring (or lodged in an orifice) then we would resort to Plan B.   My dark-haired and blue-eyed granny would hand me an ancient fork, a large marshmallow and prop me up on a stool before the cook stove.  With a flick of her wrist and a toss of her hand I was left alone to roast marshmallows until they were charred and on fire.   Or until Papaw intervened. 
3.    My meals at Casa de Porter always consisted of four things:  Lettuce, Tomato, Papaw’s cheese and a pan of rice krispie treats eaten right out of the nuclear hot iron skillet. This meal was served breakfast, lunch and dinner.
4.    My fondest memory is one where I am standing at the sliding glass door and I can see my grandmother, all 85 pounds of her, in the garden.   She is viciously hacking away at the ground with a large garden tool.   Later I found out that she was killing a snake that dared to slither too close to Birdhouse #507. 

And
Who can forget when Nan-nan convinced me that her age and wisdom coupled with my learner’s permit did a whole driver’s license make?
Who knew, too, that Marge, while living in Branchland could learn the secrets that took Houdini years to master? Upon moments of landing in a shopping mall she will instantly disappear and will only reappear when the lights flicker to signal end of day.



I thank you for my love of good bluegrass music, my fear of churches in which talking is allowed during the service, my need for having gum in social situations, my keen ability to be able to tell exactly when a vegetable is no longer edible (when it is 95% brown- not a second before).
I thank you for my love of bad television, my exposure to Nick at Night at 2am, my sudden realization that life, or at least birthdays, should stop at 25, your recipe for fried chicken (tub of butter Crisco and pancake flour), for showing me how to make everything better (or at least gaudier) by adding sparkles, sequins and/or rhinestones, for showing me that if something stands still long enough it does, in fact, deserve to be painted, that a gourd is that much better if painted in Patriotic colors, and that a giant Angel painted on the side of a tiny house is not only perfect but preferred by one out of two doctors that have been committed.

I thank you for my ability to pick up on people who are lying, food that “H’aint no good”, and for pages upon pages of blog-worthy material from your antics alone.

And now, on your 25th birthday we gather today to celebrate you and your quirks.  All 4, 804 of them.  

I love you, Nan-nan, not because I have to, but because I’m scared of your heavenly connections.  I wouldn’t put it past you to black ball me at the pearly gates by telling the saint about the time I drew pictures of talking kittens in the ancient family bible.   

I’m pretty sure you erased me from the looping family tree by the time I was three.

But still – have a good birthday and make sure you tell all your friends over Sunday prayer that your party, well, “it waddn’t no good!”

                     

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