[golfmundo]

I caught a female family member taking a lint roller to a feminine hygiene product.

My grandmother, who I live with, needed to move a small window AC unit from her bedroom to the garage because she was notified by the TV HOA that it would be her third strike if she kept it visible from the street. I told her I would move it myself when I returned from my yoga class so she didn't have to, but she prided herself on being an active and independent senior, and thus wanted to do it herself. Since the unit only weighed about thirty pounds, and I'd seen her carry near that weight of boxed wine from her car to the house on more than one occasion, I figured there was no harm in letting her do this on her own. My only request was that she wear my support belt, the one that helps prevent lower back injuries during heavy lifting, so she didn't throw her back out.

Unfortunately, my grandmother made the decision to forgo the use of my support belt. She reasoned that her girdle was more than up to the task of keeping her "sausage and biscuits" in place, whatever that meant. I tried to convince her otherwise. Told her girdles are a relic of a bygone era, like the integrated driver side bottle opener in her Mercury Grand Marqueef, and are mostly for show anyway, like the rear spoiler on the back of her modified golf cart roadster, and that they provide no real support when you actually need it.

Well, she just wouldn't listen. I finally said screw it, she can make her own decisions so I left.
Upon returning, I was greeted by the sight of my grandmother using the house lint brush to remove cat hair from a tampon. Her tampon, that is. Like, the one she had just been using. As I gazed at it, I couldn't help but think how much it resembled a pork skewer from the Leesburg BBQ cook off that had recently taken place.

From what she mumbled at me, I gathered she had strained so hard trying to move that air conditioner, the tampon shot right out the bottom of her night dress like a wet trout buttered in margarine. Which reminds me, if you have Netflix, check out Chef's Table it's a great show - episode 3 with Francis Mallman (an Argentinian who cooks a mean trout) is my favorite.

Anyway, I was incredibly disappointed in my grandmother. I looked at her and was like "ugh, Nana, you're not going to still use that tampon, are you?" and she was like "that question is beneath a lady" and I was like "so is that tampon" then she was all "if you must know, I just so happen to be experiencing my monthly" and I was like "the only 'monthly' you experience is a bowel movement, which reminds me that we need to ween you off of ham and cheese sammies asap" and she was all "you wouldn't" and I was like "I would, sugar tits" and she was like "You're a terrible grandchild" and I was like "at least I don't steal your Addyi like Uncle Steve when he comes round to visit" and she was like "I know he does, that's why I switched the Addyi pills out with Coumadin" and I was like "wow, so that's why he's always going on about feeling funny after eating leafy greens" and she was like "yeah, serves him right, he always was a dumbass."

In that moment, I decided Nana had earned that tampon. I helped pick the rest of the cat hair off of it, gave it a quick fluff, then handed it back to her. After we got the air conditioner in the garage, we relaxed with some white wine, and diddled away on the keys of our living room piano while she sang show tunes from days gone by. The wine may have been overly tart and from a box, and Nana's singing may have sounded more like an alpaca losing its virginity than a human bean singing with their mouth hole, but the moment itself was perfect.

The next day, we had a long talk over sausage and biscuits about why she needs to wear a back belt and underwear when she's lifting heavy objects. At the end of the talk, I told her we were going to that new place up the street for dinner that night because I had a hankering for BBQ.