LARGETONY Blog

Here’s something to sort of give you a chuckle. About a week ago or so I come home from work and find the place lo0king a little ransacked. There were drawers open with stuff sticking out. Papers and and envelopes all over. Nothing horrible. Not like somebody had broken in or anything. But it was obvious that Granny had been searching for something. So I go in the front room and there she is just getting herself all in a tizzy because she can’t find her checkbook.

Now, Granny has not had a checkbook in five or six years. She does have a bank account, but I have been the writing checks for a while. I have a checkbook in my wallet, and the replacements are upstairs. But she was looking for her checkbook and was hopping mad because she could not find it. Lord knows how long she had been looking for it because she had overturned every nook and cranny. I think she was not so much angry that the book was “missing,” as much as she was mad at herself for not remembering where she put it. To her, it was not something misplaced, it was something put in it’s place but she couldn’t remember where that place is. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that what she really doesn’t remember is that she no longer has a checkbook, period.

So I asked her why she needed the checkbook so bad. And she looked at me like I was crazy. “I’ve gotta pay the bills, don’t I?” she snapped. (Well, silly me! ) Again, I take care of all that now. She used to handle the household finances when Grandaddy was alive, but over time it’s all pretty much fallen into my hands. “What bills, Granny?” She just got more frustrated and kept saying “I’ve gotta pay the bills. If I don’t, what are we gonna do? I’ve gotta pay the bills.

She wasn’t giving up and I knew she was just going to worry herself sick, so I went upstairs and looked through some of my stuff. I always hear that Cancers are pack rats, by nature, and I guess I totally resemble that remark. And it’s a good thing, too. I had a book of old starter checks. You know, the ones the bank gives you when you first open an account to use while you’re waiting for your printed ones to arrive in the mail? So, I took them down and pretended I found them in the kitchen drawer, which is where she used to keep stuff like that.

“They were in the kitchen drawer, where you left them,” I said as I presented them to her. She breathed the biggest sigh and shook her head and said something about having an old noggin’ and that she’d lose that, too, if it wasn’t attached. So she took the checks and sat down and started writing out payments for old bills that I imagine she found in a box she had pulled out. I guess that’s what triggered the whole event. She found these old statements and freaked out and was hell bent on getting them paid. (Even if it would be for the second time …and years later. ) She had a mission, so who was I to stop her?

She wrote out for or five of them and soon had them in envelopes and ready for stamps. So I took them and told her I would put them in the mail. Naturally, I didn’t, because those bills had long since been paid. But she didn’t need to know that. She felt like she had an obligation to fulfill and as long as she feels satisfied that she did, then I am satisfied that I have fulfilled mine.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 26th, 2005 at 11:55 pm and is filed under being tony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.