BLONDE LOGIC

Grandsmother

My family loves to rehash curious memories. There is a common familial thread , a yearning to be eccentric. Nobody wants to talk about normal, average family memories like birthdays, graduations or personal achievements but physical mishaps, bizarre facts, and abandoned dreams, every detail is examined.

This past weekend my sister had a “do you remember?” episode. She said “ Do you remember that bookcase at Gami’s ( we call our grand-smother Gami – I refer to her as grand-smother as she can smother every morsel of emotional comfort out of anybody in ten minutes or less. I’ve timed her. ) My sister asked “ Do you remember that bookcase at Gami’s that had all the bookcovers turned inside out?”.

I didn’t remember.

“How can you not remember that? It was so weird and we couldn’t look at the books. Remember? What do you think those books were about? I mean why would the book covers be turned inside out?”.

Can you sense the hope? The longing for confirmation that we do, in fact, come from a family full of peculiarities?

What I do remember about my grand-smothers house was that she had a King sized bed all to herself. Do you know how big a King sized bed is?  Six and a quarter feet by six and a half feet. That’s more than 40 square feet of bed (I think). Either way, it’s humongous, especially to a seven year old. She would let me stay up to watch the midnight horror movie on Channel 56. When the movie was over she’d say “Ok babe, sweet dreams. If you get up early, be quiet, your old grandmother needs her sleep”. Then she’d shut the light and I’d lay there perfectly still wondering what method the killer would use when he arrived and how the hell I would keep quiet through the whole thing. She had make shift black out shades too, so sometimes I’d end up lying there until close to noon waiting for my eminent dismemberment.  

The stereotypical grandmother likes to bake cookies and cakes and tell you how amazing you are at everything. Mine would make kielbasa and drink a stiff whiskey sour and talk about herself.  Even her heyday had a sour edge. “I had such a crush on that Charlie McCarthy but I never let on. Then one day he asked me out. I couldn’t believe it. Then, we get out, we’re on a double date and he’s drinking  beer and I wanted whiskey. Well that cheap bastard made such a big stink that that whiskey was more than that beer. Do you know I never went out with a Mick again? Don’t ever get married, Kendra. Find someone who likes you more than you like them.  That’s the best you can hope for.  Listen to your old grandmother.” 

Words of wisdom from a Lithuanian grandmother.

Once I had an apartment in Southie that had a yard with plastic furniture.  Gami was sitting in a plastic chair dressed to the nines with her purse on her lap waiting to be taken to Easter brunch. She went to get up and fell backwards in the lawn chair right into the bushes with her legs up in the air. I hid in the apartment crying laughing.

That’s the hardest she ever made me laugh.  

When she had a physical mishap.

 

Thanks for listening!

Kisses-

Kendra

Kendra is a stand up comic living in Brooklyn where she owns a super comfortable bed. She spends most of her time wondering where the hell her sugar daddy is and hoping he didn’t settle.

www.kendracunningham.com

www.blondelogicblog.com

 

 

 

How to Get Ousted from Hot Potato

 

For some reason people love to give bartenders presents. Usually little things like CDs or books or baked goods. Sometimes these baked goods have illegal drugs in them but the gift bearer doesn’t disclose that fact.  The bartender has the pleasure of figuring it out. I love that.

Who doesn’t like to know someone was thinking of them? Even if that someone has a bit of a drinking problem and periodic anger management issues. I tend to operate under the guise “if you like me, I like you”. It’s the mutual admiration society. Once in a while bartenders receive things they don’t want.  At all. Like lovelorn poems, creepy drawings, or things we could absolutely care less about like unusual coins. I can’t think of a more boring gift than a Susan B. Anthony coin.  There is a whole microcosm of people who think dollar coins are neato keen. I don’t. I’ve never met a bartender coin collector. Most bartenders hate coins. They symbolize a shit tip. I’ll tell you what bartenders do like- dollar bills. If you have a rare dollar bill, a bartender would cherish it. Cherish meaning they would vigilanlty hide it somewhere until they could get to a bank to cash that sucker in.

The dollar coin is like a Hot Potato. You’re always trying to quickly pass it off to the next person before they can realize what has happened. In case you weren’t lucky enough to play Hot Potato as a kid, the “game” involves sitting in a circle and while music plays, the kids throw around a “hot potato” which could be a beanbag or a stuffed animal. Someone periodically and unexpectedly stops the music and whoever is holding the Hot Potato is out of the game. I was a spastic player during Hot Potato as a kid. The minute it came towards me I caught it, panicked, and whipped it aimlessly often hitting my best friend in the nose, eye or forehead. Someplace that would cause other kids to yell “no fairsies”  and I’d get in trouble for poor sportsmanship even though I was just highly anxious about losing. I often got ousted for something other than holding the Hot Potato. Sometimes they’d play songs from Annie and I’d get caught up singing It’s a Hard Knocked Life and lose my competitive edge. Either way I never cared for Hot Potato. Hot Potato was billed as a game to increase eye-hand coordination and catching but you never heard people say “ Did you see Kendra catch and toss that Hot Potato seconds before Beauty School Drop Out came to a screeching halt? She’s good that kid. Real good.”

The point is I don’t like dollar coins. When someone gives me a dollar coin I think “ I just lost a dollar” because I know I’m not going to pawn it off on some other unsuspecting sad sack. I’m going to put it in my coin jar and years from now I’ll still take the extra time to sift around it to get at four quarters in order to avoid the bashful exchange of a dollar coin mano  a mano.

That’s the type of anxiety that can only be bred from years of forced participation in Hot Potato and Musical Chairs.

Brought to you by the Commission to Discontinue Traditional Childhood Games

 

 

 

 Thanks for listening!

Kisses-

Kendra

Kendra is a stand up comic living in Brooklyn where she owns a super comfortable bed. She spends most of her time wondering where the hell her sugar daddy is and hoping he didn’t settle.

www.kendracunningham.com