Grandmother???

I suppose everyone has the right to pick what they want their grandchildren to call them. Growing up, we had Nana. Pretty much everyone called her either Nana or Shorty. She answered readily to both.

Many people have Grandma or Granny or Gramma or some other, relatively "normal" moniker.

Kim's grandsons call her Nanna. Debbie's grandson calls her Gr'mama, or something like that. Well, actually I think Thomas is the only verbal one, so the rest are currently just being indoctrinated on what to call them.

I plan to be called "Old Man." Joseph is appalled and insists that he won't let his children call me Old Man. Matthew thinks it's great. He has called me Old Man for years. I rather think of it as a term of endearment. An accurate one, too. After all, I certainly don't see a young man when I look in the mirror these days!

For some reason, Mom elected to be called Grandmother.

Why?

I have no clue whatsoever.

Maybe Mom somehow fancied herself as a less reluctant version of farm wife Lisa Douglas from Green Acres. Maybe her secret ambition was to be glamorous.

Personally, I always figured her for more of a Granny from Beverly Hillbillies.

Mom reminded me a lot of Daisy May "Granny" Moses; matriarch of the Clampett gang. Mom thought nothing of slogging through the muck and manure to help one of her "pet" cows. Also, like Granny, she was always "doctoring" someone or something. No one dared to sniff or sneeze in her presence for fear of "Dr. Peggy" jumping into action.

Some of my funniest memories of Mom involve her racing around the farmyard banging a cast iron pan with a metal spoon in an attempt to chase critters; whether real or imaginary, away from her chickens. Not exactly a Lisa Douglas kind of moment.

Mom also somehow thought of herself as a modern day Annie Oakley. I'm not exactly sure how she justified this title since she couldn't hit the side of a barn. Now the roof is a different story entirely! Mom once found a raccoon stealing eggs from the chickens that nested in the haymow. Now Mom seemed quite certain that every wild critter had rabies and anyone encountering a wild animal nearly had to don a  hazmat suit.

A rabid raccoon could not be left in the barn. Mom's solution was to race back to the house to get her .22 caliber revolver. Now, in Mom's defense, the raccoon was in the rafters - probably 12 feet away from her. All in all, Mom shot at that poor raccoon 13 times. I say shot at because I don't believe she ever actually hit the poor critter.

She even had to stop and reload at one point!

I'm convinced that the raccoon ultimately died from laughing so hard it couldn't breathe.

The raccoon ultimately died and Mom was left with a rather nice collection of small bullet holes through the steel barn roof.

A real Annie Oakley.

We happened to be visiting her one summer when she found another raccoon in the haymow. I volunteered to take care of it for her. I took her trusty revolver up into the barn and shot the most-certainly-rabid, egg pilfering raccoon. I shot one time and the raccoon fell dead from the rafters and landed in a pile of loose hay.

Mom was shocked and asked how I managed to kill it from "so far away" with only one shot. I answered, "Um... I aimed and shot it and it died."

It was pretty simple, really.

Mom's response still brings a smile to my face as I recall her words. She actually said, "Oh. I close my eyes when I pull the trigger because I don't want to watch them die." I reminded her that the likelihood of them dying drops off pretty dramatically when she closes her eyes before the bullet leaves the muzzle.

Like I said; a real Annie Oakley.

Mom insisted that I should just put the dead raccoon into a garbage bag for Ted to take care of when he got home. I had to use a pitchfork, of course since it was certainly rabid. Plus I had to wear gloves to handle the pitchfork - just in case that rabies virus started crawling up the handle, I guess.

I still had to sanitize my hands as soon as we went back inside, of course, even though I wore gloves and was never actually closer than two feet to the most-certainly-rabid raccoon.

Maybe she was closer to Lisa Douglas than I thought...

Anyway, Mom told me to throw it on the old poultry barn for Ted to deal with when he got home. We were gone from the farm that evening so I couldn't tell him myself. Somehow, though, Mom forgot to mention the raccoon tied up in the black plastic garbage bag sitting on top of the old poultry barn. She forgot about it for three days.

It was Summer.

In Missouri.

You get the point.

After three days, Ted noticed a vile smell behind the poultry barn; which reminded Mom about the little treat that he needed to handle from the roof.

Lucky Ted!

Anyway, to get back to the point, all of this really makes the question even more relevant; how did Mom ever come up with Grandmother? This is not what you think of as Grandmother. I'd buy Grandma, Granny, Tex, whatever - but Grandmother?

Maybe Ted or one of the girls knows why she chose Grandmother.

Maybe I don't want to know.

Some things are just more fun when left to our imaginations. This may be one of those things.