My grandmother calls me every night at about 9 PM. “Olá querida, where are you?” Never how I am, always where. By 9 PM it’s dark and if I’m out she panics. Such is her agony when I concede that I am outside the safety perimeter of my home that I have started lying to her.
When she called on Monday I was in the mall. I didn’t think I could mask the obnoxious shopping noises, so I admitted that I was indeed out, but that I wasn’t very far from home and would be returning shortly. By ‘shortly’ I meant, of course, after the 9:30 PM showing of Hairspray. Not that I go to the movies much, especially not alone, but I don’t think I know anyone yet in Lisbon who loves me enough to be deceived into watching a musical without irreparable damage to our friendship.
“But aren’t you afraid of being KIDNAPPED?” by grandmother gasped between exclamations to the Divine.
Not robbed, not raped…kidnapped.
Well, if I thought my granddaughter was 6 I’d be afraid if she were out alone after 9 PM, too.
Yesterday I was home at 9 PM, chomping down on dinner (what I ate for dinner is always the second question, by the way). But yesterday after wishing me luck and happiness, which is usually the signal that our 30 seconds are up, she rambled on for a bit about how we have to earn our good luck. Along the lines of “if you’re wandering the streets alone after dark you DESERVE to be kidnapped.”
I think she might be catching on.
No comments:
Post a Comment