Dad: “How far away is dinner?”

Mum: “About two metres.”

Dad: “HAHA. How long will it be?”

Annik: “I’d say the pork’s around 20cm.”

Dad: “You’re all wankers.”

As usual, the annual Boxing Day visit with my grandfather was brightened this year by his 82 year-old girlfriend.

“I like a tall man,” she shared, “None of these goddamn little squirts. Annik, how tall is your boyfriend?”

“I’m not really sure. I think he’s about 5’9″?”

“Well that’s no good. You should get a new one.”

My father treats a lot of old folk in nursing homes around the Hills, and they are all nuts. Based on the anecdotes he shares about these visits, I am definitely going to stuff him and Mum into a home the moment one of them loses their glasses and then finds them on top of their head.

Some snippets:

• At a certain Christmas Carols charity concert one year, a mature lady did not feel she was being given enough attention as everyone was looking towards the performers on stage and not at her. In an admirable effort, she stripped down to her birthday suit and strutted up and down the aisle of the nursing home’s dining hall while waving her arms above her head. Obeying instructions from staff to ignore this particularly attention-seeking patient, the other geriatrics simply stared ahead and continued to watch the carols. Undeterred, the naked lady walked to the side of the stage and unplugged all the speakers, then climbed on top of one of them and began singing her own carols.

• One blind patient was admitted after she fell and broke a hip while frantically going through her house searching for her missing husband. When the paramedics were called to attend to the blind lady, they discovered her husband hiding in a wardrobe, giggling at his visually-impaired wife’s inability to win Hide and Seek. In an apparent attempt to make amends, the husband would visit his blind wife at the Home for lunch every day. The nurse would place a plate in front of each of them and explain to the blind lady, “Your peas are at twelve o’clock, your potatoes are at three o’clock, your ham is at six o’clock and your carrots are at nine o’clock.” The old man would smile at the nurse, wait for her to leave, and then reach over and spin his wife’s plate forty-five degrees.

• Foolishly, I accompanied my father on a call to a nursing home when I was about eleven. Bored and wandering the halls, I got talking to an old bird who pulled me into her room with the promise of a gift. As I silently assessed my nearest emergency exits, she shuffled around her kitchen opening and closing cupboards and muttering to herself. “Why don’t you let me go and we’ll just call it square?” I suggested, but she had apparently found what she was looking for and pressed an apple and a pear into my hands. ”I got these for you,” she lied as I backed away. Out in the hall, I shoved them into the nearest fruit bowl and then made my father take me home.

• Another lady ate all her blankets, then bitched about being cold at night and having a sore tummy.

Earlier this year, a blogger friend asked me to be a bridesmaid in her upcoming wedding. Deciding that this was probably as close as I would ever get to my lifelong dream of being a Flower Girl, as there is not an overly high demand in the current economic climate for twenty-two year old Flower Girls, I accepted.

A frequent visitor of bridal forums, my blogger friend had come to learn many new acronyms. Most of these were fairly self-explanatory (eg MIL = mother-in-law, and so on), but some were already deeply ingrained in my brain as something else entirely.

“You will be fabulous as a BM,” my blogger friend said to me in an email.

And all I could imagine was myself being eaten, and then defecated, by a giant monster.

Concerned about the oddities of my family, I recently asked my boyfriend whether he likes my parents.

“I like your dad,” he replied.

My brother, trying to explain dungeons and dragons to my mother:

“It’s like telling a story, but it takes fucking ages.

So one nerd says, “Holy shit, there’s a big scary dragon over there!” and the next nerd says, “Well I’ll shove a rocket launcher up its arse,” but the first nerd says, “You can only shove a rocket launcher up its arse if you roll a six or more….nope, sorry, you’re dead.”

Then they wish they had friends.”

I once dated what I thought was a smart guy. On our fourth (and final) date, we were out having drinks when I made a joke about being a supermodel.

“Oh my god!” he snorted, “That’s hilarious! I mean, you’re gorgeous, but you could never be a supermodel!”

I know that, cocknose.

When I was nineteen, I shared a house in West Ryde with a twenty-six year old tradesman. This meant that 80% of the fridge space was taken up by beer and the TV could always be heard from halfway down the street, but apart from that, he was an acceptable housemate.

When summer began, my housemate’s co-workers started coming over regularly to work on their cars in our large backyard. Undeterred, I continued my strict sun-bathing regime and spent every afternoon lying on the trampoline in a bikini. Gradually, I gained the attention of one of these guys, and once I knew I had it in the bag, I told my housemate to hand over my phone number.

“Why would you want to date him?” my friends asked, “He’s a tradie.”
“Don’t be so judgmental,” I scolded, “Just because he breaks stuff for a living doesn’t mean he isn’t intelligent, charming and interesting.”

A week later, I received the following text message:

Hey, how rya? Do ya wanna go out 1 nite dis week n grab sum food n shit?

I sunbaked in the front yard after that.

As I lay on the beautician’s table, a middle-aged Greek woman applied hot wax to my legs and patted on cloth strips. Each time she tore away a strip, she grunted and licked her lips. Together, we worked in silence – her inflicting; me enduring. When she got to my bikini line, however, she straightened and made an announcement:

“There’s two things in life I never done.”

I’ve always been intrigued by people, places and products that define themselves by what they are not, rather than what they are. Surely it’s quicker if we just cut to the chase?

“Small-talk,” I guessed.

“No,” she replied, “I never had a nose bleed and I never threw up.”

“I’ve never had a nose bleed either,” I sympathised, “But I’ve thrown up a lot.”

“I never threw up,” she repeated.

“That’s ridiculous, everybody throws up.”

“I never did.”

“But you must have,” I pressed, “When you were a baby. Babies throw up all the time.”

“I never threw up. You should get laser, save us both this shit,” she advised, nodding towards my crotch.

I did.

• Glandular fever
• Pneumonia
• Cancer of the brain
• Arthritis
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Epilepsy
• Appendicitis
• Broken ankle
• Leukemia
• HIV
• Anaemia
• Receding hairline
• SARS
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• Emphysema
• Alcoholism
• Insomnia
• Heart murmur