I was very lucky growing up because no one ever spanked me. But Nagymama sure did threaten! Whenever I did anything out of line, she could grab a wooden spoon and wave it at me, or pretend that she was going to hit me with her
“Papucs”.
So, one day, we had a Jehovah’s witnesses at the door, and as usual, my family felt guilty and let him in to give his monologue. I was playing with Barbie too loudly or something and everyone stopped in their tracks. Nagymama took one look at me and screamed, “Hol van a fa kanál?!” (“Where is the wooden spoon?”) A fairly normal threat to someone who speaks Hungarian, but this is what that sentence probably sounds like to an English speaker: “Holy one, oh fuckin’ hell!” He looked a little disturbed at Nagymama’s rants and promptly left.
A few weeks later, he rang our doorbell again, but this time, he brought backup – two more Jehovah’s witnesses. My mom whispered, “Stephie, go to the door and tell dem dat we are Jevish.”
I was confused.
“But, I thought we were Christian…”
“Yes, yes, but Jevish...
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This Month's Featured Post: Kristine
Kristine's tale of what happened when her grandmother got called into jury duty not long after she officially retired from nursing.
A light conversation turns to Nagymama vs. Nagymama. (Sorry it's blurry - my old camera stunk).
Growing up, whenever I entered my home, I braced myself for the inevitable yelp from Nagymama, “PAPUCS! PAAAAPUCS!”
“Papucs” is Hungarian for “slipper”. Any time you came into my house, you had to lose your shoes and don the papucs. It didn’t ever help me that I’ve always been tall, so by age 14 I was already 5’ft10” with a 10-1/2 shoe size. Papucs never came in sizes lager than 9 from the El Cheapo Store, so my socked feet usually hung several inches over the back.
Thinking back on the papucs, I swear to god, she had 500 of these things! Dr. Seuse would have a field-day on my Nagymama:
Old papucs. New papucs.
Red papucs. Blue papucs.
The thing is, no matter how many papucs Anyu would buy her, she would wear the oldest, nastiest pair with the cardboard sticking out of the bottom. Nothing would stop her from hemming and fixing and gluing and sewing and nailing and taping the damned $2.99 papucs.
At a certain point, we developed a serious papucs problem.
Nagymama had started to get up in age, so she kept on losing her balance. It didn’t help that...
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You heard about my grandma - now I want to hear about yours!
In this day and age, people blog every time they change their freaking nail polish!!! But a lot of people forget to capture the more important things in life...like stories from your older relatives. They have probably lived through the stock market crash, countless wars, and "The Good Old Days." So, next time they ask you, "How was school today?" ask them, "How was school for YOU...yesterday?"
Post your vids as a response to this one and keep the conversation going!
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Film Clip from Bill Plympton's "How to Kiss".
I was very lucky growing up because no one ever spanked me. But Nagymama sure did threaten! Whenever I did anything out of line, she could grab a wooden spoon and wave it at me, or pretend that she was going to hit me with her “Papucs”.
