My Grandma Was A Saint

(That is NOT my dear departed Grandma)

Witty and sharped tounged women run in my family. It's a gift really, and with each generation one steps forward to take the spotlight. My Grandma Driscoll was the spotlighter in her day. She was amazing. Beautiful and sharp as a tack, she was a bookie, yup a bookie, in the days when women didn't even consider doing those things, but Gramma was different. She loved sports, she loved politics, and her beloved Red Sox, (which is probably where I got some of it) and she would run the numbers every day with her brother-in law Louie at his dining room table. She was one special chick. Men loved her, because she could handicap a game, place a bet for them and sit down and chew the fat about the NFL, the NHL and then smoothly transition to any other topic of current events or politics with ease.

And Grandma Driscoll could tell a joke. Of course, she'd tell dirty ones, but I never really heard any because she would send us kids out of the room for those.

I do remember her telling me this joke when I got older:

Why does a bee hum??

You'd hum too if you just laid your honey.

Then she'd laugh her special laugh.

The best memory we all have of Grandma Driscoll is one Thanksgiving at the dinner table. We were all going around the table, with each member saying a little something they were thankful for, as most families tend to do on Thanksgiving. When we got to Grandma Driscoll, she said, "I don't think I'll say anything. Instead I'd like to sing you all a song."

She then proceeded to sing us this song in a very small and soft singing voice:

"Oh, there was a little bird no bigger than a turd who flew to a telegraph pole.

He stretched his little neck, and he shit about a peck,

then he closed up his little asshole."

Each and every one of her 13 great grandchildren have been taught that song in her memory.

As they say, they broke the mold when they made my Grandma.

I miss her so much sometimes and often wonder what kind of advice she would give me today.