Seven Red

Ellie says hi to her grandmother, who presumably doesn’t visit this site to read my rants and ramblings. So, from time to time she gets a giant, blue-eyed smiley face for her troubles.

But, on the same note, a pet peeve of mine. I’m fine with calling grandparents “granny” and similar such endearments. Ellie calls her grandmothers “Granny” and “Nonna.” (Ellie’s “Nonna,” by the way, is 100% Irish, but that’s another story). That’s great. I had a grandma and a nonna (my nonna was 100% Italian, while my grandma fled Ireland in the 1920′s). But when I refer to either of my grandmothers in conversation with people outside my family, I always use “my grandmother.” I get totally weirded out when I’m speaking to some adult about something and I hear “Oh, my gramgram used to make that dish.” Your gramgram? Really? It’s a little familiar. But this strikes me as a very strange rule I’m applying. So, say Ellie is talking to me, twenty years hence. It would be perfectly fine for her to say “Is Granny back from her waterskiing junket yet?” If, on the other hand, she was talking to her med school colleague, she should say “My grandmother is waterskiing in Antigua.” Not “My granny is waterskiing in Antigua,” cuz that’s just weird. Hell, when I talk to my brothers I still refer to my mother as “Mommy.” But I don’t refer to her as Mommy to anyone else in the entire friggin’ world – not even to her. I remember making this case once to a woman from the South, and she got all sniffy like “It’s a Southern thing.” OK, maybe. Am I the only one bothered by this? Am I the only one who cringes when otherwise reasonable adults tell me about their Nanna or their Pop-pop?

Yaargh. Curmudgeon! Yaargh!

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