It's a hat-trick! Three posts in one morning!
Dear Person In This Classroom Waiting For Class To Start: I can hear your music. Even though you have earbuds in. And it's annoying music. Love, the Curmudgeon in the Corner.
So the part that I left out of my post about my birthday is that in the morning on Saturday, my granddad, who is 87 years old, suffered an attack of low blood sugar. He then slept the whole day and woke up in the early evening with chest pains. My mom (who lives with him) took him to the emergency room, and it turns out he has atrial fibrillation. So they're looking at a pacemaker.
Because I'm a selfish, horrible person, the first thing that I thought when my mom called was that if he passed away, it would ruin my birthday forever. I've always been extremely close to my granddad - he was pretty much my dad growing up - and losing him suddenly like that would have just crushed me, thereby ruining the day forever.
My second thought was that if he passed, his last words to me were "I don't want to talk to you anymore; here's your mom." He said that because I was fussing at him about his blood sugar on the phone that morning. I told my mother to tell him that I love him, to which he replied "I'm sure she does, and I'm thankful." Ouch. He is not a good/cooperative patient, and the EMTs were there giving him an IV at the time, so I'm going to let that pass. In any case, it's no "Bite my butt, Bill" (the last words of my mother-in-law's mother), so I don't have much to complain about I guess.
Third thought: I never accepted his friend request on Facebook. And then I felt horribly guilty. And then I got really, really pissed off at Facebook, and whoever introduced him to Facebook. (I know now that it was one of my uncles, and I want to punch him hard in the knee.) I specifically have not accepted his friend request on Facebook for two reasons. 1) This blog. I really don't think he'd like my language in this blog. And I don't want to censor myself to cater to his feelings on that. And 2) I'm not really sure I want my 87-year-old granddad knowing what I'm actually up to, as opposed to what I tell him I'm up to.
It's not that I lie to him. It's more that I don't necessarily need for him to know that I was drunk as cooter on Friday night. Or that I question organized religion. He knows I'm a Democrat, and that's hard enough for him to accept. Why peel away the veil and let him know that I believe Muslims are people too? What if I mentioned at some point on my FB page just how much I hate the conservative e-mail forwards I get from him by the truckload? (Don't worry - I've already come to grips with the fact that I know I will miss all of the "DEMOCRATS ARE RUINING AMERICA" subject lines I've come to expect pretty much since he found out how much I hate George W. Bush in 2004.)
So now I feel like a deficient granddaughter. But I'm still really undecided on this. Do I make him feel good for a minute when I accept the friend request, and then risk ruining the way he thinks of me forever? He's becoming more and more crotchety and less forgiving as he ages - he's already told me what he thinks of me a couple of different times. And I feel like if I make him face the last few illusions he has about me, our relationship won't recover.
For now, I'm sure he's thinking far more about his health (and mostly, so am I) than he is about whether or not we're friends on Facebook. But if I know him, he'll be a lot better really, really quickly. And then I'm fucked.
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