Proceed With Caution
I had an interesting debate with my Grandmother today, and it wasn’t about her pigmented lesions for once, which made a change. The debate was about free-running. It had come about because free-running was on the TV and so there we’d sat, for a full ten minutes, staring at the impossible feats of these high-achieving young men.
Then Gran said, “They must be on drugs!”
After stifling the urge to laugh I said, calmly, “No nan, they aren’t on drugs. This is what they do. They know what they’re doing you see.”
The room exploded in loud muttering—nobody can mutter louder than a Grandparent can when aroused by the thought of terrible, evil drugs—and an argument ensued. I was on one side, my Grandparents were on the other, and in the middle was mum and dad, staring at me as if to say Just drop it will you? Can’t you see that they don’t understand? Can’t you see that they’ll never understand for as long as they live? Which will not be much longer if you keep this charade up!
I dropped it, which is unnatural for me. I just find it really hard to stop when I know I’m winning.
Except I wasn’t winning, because nana and granddad violently refused to believe me: they still thought that the free-runners were high on drugs and “Think they can fly!”
So I guess the point is this; you can’t argue about some things with your Grandparents, there’s just no point in it. Plus you have to shout your words, which means that you deafen anyone in the room who isn’t 80 plus–