In the mail quite a few weeks ago I received this shirt
and a short story booklet about an adventure of this Texas river legend from my Grandfather. I think I get my story telling skills from him.
So I decided to start a series on this here blog, called The Adventures of Gilmer.
Or, $hit that happened while I was wearing the above T-shirt.
So without further ado, I present Guadalupe Gilmer's Panty Raid.
Every weekday morning after I drop the kids off at school, I run down the street to have coffee with my Granny. I've blogged about her before; I like old people. She lives in a retirement center (NOT A NURSING HOME!). A retirement center is a place where you can live after you retire. According to Granny it's an apartment complex where you live surrounded by wrinkled, crotchety geriatrics waiting to die from a variety of illnesses. CLEARLY not a place for HER. She's not old, crotchety or geriatric, really. She's a 22 year old trapped in an 82 year old body.
Anywho.
People who live in the center die at a rate of about three a month, more or less, I don't keep accurate death tolls. Too morbid. And as my cousin Lauren aptly described the situation, "They're like a bunch of buzzards that hover around a dying resident, waiting to take possession of their belongings once the hearse clears the parking lot." Indeed. I've SEEN it.
Sadly, Granny's dear friend passed away recently after a long battle with cancer. She was such a sweet lady. Granny was reminiscing about her friend one day as we were visiting Lauren and her newborn oh-so-cute chubby baby girl. She mentioned that when she and her friend arrived at the viewing, they were the only ones there. So they went up to see how good a job the mortician had done on their friend's body. What a way to shop for your future expenses, eh?
So they walked up there and inspected her. As in, CHECKED TO MAKE SURE HE INSERTED HER GOOD TEETH. As opposed to.... the wooden ones? I dunno.
They also looked to see how well the artist had covered the shunt site on her chest.
Now, I'm assuming the dearly departed wasn't wearing a bikini.
So that meant they had to... um... LOOK UNDER HER SHIRT.
They said he did a good job.
By the end of this adventure everyone around the table was red-faced and dying from laughter and probably embarrassment. I'm pretty sure Granny asked us to do a postmortem inspection because, you know, if you pay thousands of dollars for someone to make you look undead they better do a damn good job. I started to imagine Granny coming into my room as a ghost in the middle of the night demanding a refund from the funeral home because her bouffant wasn't as good as the girls at the cosmetology school would have done.
Such is my life.
Lauren's doing that inspection with me, by the way.
Then we're gonna go chug martini's until Granny's ghost appears.
Back to the Panty Raid.
After the funeral and appropriate waiting period (about 18 hours) the residents of the retirement center began to gather around their friend's apartment, waiting for the survivors to begin passing out or selling the deceased's belongings that they had silently called dibs on while visiting their ill friend. Friends leave with anything from recliners to canned goods to hundreds of mini bottles of lotion and body wash. Or their panties.
Yeah.
You knew I was going there right?
Not by choice, mind you.
So one morning I go to Granny's and sit down with my cup of joe and Gilmer and I start reading the newspaper when Granny comes into the living room:
"Hey Tally, I went up to (the friend)'s apartment and got a few things that her daughter was throwing away. She gave me a WHOLE WAL-MART BAG FULL of her panties. Now I washed them all REAL GOOD and they're laying there on the bed. You go in there and pick out the ones you want; I've already picked out mine. They're good panties, a little big for me but they're those expensive silk kind, you may not like them but I like them."
How do you respond to THAT?!
BESIDES choking on your coffee?!
I can't even think of what to write after that.
Gilmer and I just kinda sat there dumbfounded.
Then I politely declined.
I'm pretty sure Gilmer had a good laugh, first because of the situation and secondly because he knew I would have to answer because a screened image on the back of a T-shirt can't talk, you know.
I know that the generation that grew up during the Great Depression recycle, reuse and hoard. But really?
REALLY???
The Gilmer shirt is dirty, need to go start a load of laundry.
