Cool Grandma (a Short Story)

Amy would always remember the summers she spent with her grandma.

Behind her back, Amy called her “Cool Grandma” because she drove a sports car and, when the kids came to stay during the summer, she always ordered pizza. Granted, she ate it wrong, crust first. But that was beside the point.

One summer, when Amy and her older sister came to stay, their mother had only said they could come if they helped grandma by washing out her cupboards and painting the flagpole. It delighted the girls when grandma admitted she’d only told their mother she needed the help so their mother would say yes.

It was a lazy summer in grandma’s little yellow house on the corner lot. Amy enjoyed finding things to do outside and was never bored. She didn’t mind the heat or how the beating sun turned her freckled shoulders red instead of tanned. The girl would stay forever, if she could.

Grandma had a strange neighbor next door who was convinced Prince Charles had asked her to marry him. She informed Amy that the Prince would one day show up at her house in a limo and whisk her away to the palace in England. Amy’d watched Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding on TV the year before, so she understood the neighbor was mistaken.

When the girls’ parents came for a visit to see how things were going, grandma pointed to some new doilies on the coffee table and said her neighbor had tatted them. Amy, who had met the neighbor, asked why she’d said she was marrying Prince Charles. Her father shook his head and said, under his breath, “She’s the mad tatter.”

Another reason Amy called her “Cool Grandma” was because she let Amy and her older sister stay up late to watch the midnight movie. Grandma would stay up and watch, too. One night, while they were watching “The Blob,” they heard loud popping noises outside.

Grandma turned the TV down and asked if the girls heard that. Pulling the curtains aside, grandma said she didn’t see anything. More popping disturbed the stillness of the night, and the older sister exclaimed, “Fireworks!”

“Follow me,” the cool grandma said, waving the girls through the front door.

All three were clad in pajamas as they crept down the sidewalk in the night. The popping sounds continued, but none of them could see any fireworks lighting up the sky. When they’d walked two blocks from grandma’s house, she stopped suddenly and gasped. The girls were sure something was wrong but grandma waved them back toward the house.

As they hurried along, grandma said, “We’re out here in our pajamas!”

She seemed worried, but Amy and her older sister giggled all the way back to the house.

Amy had other adventures at grandma’s, too. Like finding a garter snake and chasing her older sister around the back yard, laughing while she screamed. Until grandma scolded her, that is.

She caught lots of lightening bugs and grandma gave her a canning jar with holes punched in the lid to put them in. As Amy watched the captured bugs, grandma told her they wouldn’t live long and said it was a shame they were stuck in the jar. Amy began to feel bad and wondered if the lightening bugs missed their families. So, she let them go and only watched them from then on.

Summers at grandma’s seemed to last forever and Amy wished they’d never end. Someday, she hoped she would be a fun and cool grandma, too.

Notes:

Thank you for reading this little slice of life short story. I hope you liked it.