Monday, November 24, 2008

Lions and Tigers, and Bears. OH MY!

I’m trying to get back into Grey’s Anatomy. I loved the first season. Got bored and stopped watching the second season. My daughter wants me to watch the third season with her, so I’m trying. I don’t think it will last. It is hard for me to believe that a large group of supposedly intelligent people who just went through eight years of school and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition would risk it all by performing surgery on each other. My suspension of disbelief does not extend to this scenario.

But I digress. The guy with the night terrors last week. That’s what I meant to use as my jumping board.

The night terrors reminded me of growing up with my younger sister. She had them and we shared a room together all the way until my older sister left home at seventeen. So I was thirteen and my younger sister was eleven when we first got our own rooms. Up until then, I was subjected to my sister’s weird, vivid, surreal, and sometimes terrifying dream landscape.

When we lived in the Valley, she used to wake up EVERY SINGLE MORNING at 6:30 AM screaming bloody murder. And even though it happened every day, my poor mom would come rushing into the room in a panic attack, just in case some serial killer had actually broken into our house and was butchering her girls. Back then my sister’s dream was that it was raining blood. For a few minutes after my mom came in the room and tried to hush her and console her, my sister would scream about the blood and how it covered everything in the room. The fact that I eventually got used to this shows how resilient kids can be.

Her next frequent flyer was trolls. Gnomes. Little people. Our twin beds were lined up parallel, with just a couple feet between us. She’d wake me up in the middle of the night and tell me to make the little trolls down by her feet go away. That they were keeping her awake with their talking. This dream kind of freaked me out, because my sister was and always has been someone with a strong sixth sense. I wasn’t sure if it WAS just a dream, or she saw something I didn’t. But, according to her, they took off when I scolded them to, so I took this as a sign that if they were real they were more scared of me than I was of them.

As we got older, her nightmares turned from fear based to anger and frustration.

So one day in the middle of summer while we were visiting our grandmother, Little Sis falls into a nap on the couch. Now, I was all about visits to Granny’s house. We had been going there for whole weeks during the summer and weekends during the school year our whole life. Granny lived with our uncle, my dad’s older brother, and I loved visiting. They would put a card table up in the living room and we would play card games and board games for hours. I loved that stuff. I loved the safety of their love and the emotional safety in their home. I loved when my granny taught me to knit and crochet and when my uncle taught me how to use C-clamps, saws, hammers, and drills in his workshop. I loved the regularity of their days and their meals and their rituals. It did not change as I became a teenager; I still loved hanging out with my grandma and my uncle.

It was the early 1970 or '71 and when we were not at Granny and uncles, well, we were living quite different lives with our parents and with our friends. But no matter how much shit we were giving our parents, we were always our best selves at granny’s.

So, I’m sitting at the card table in the late afternoon playing canasta with my grandma and my sister is asleep on the couch. About four feet away from us. I think she was about 12 or 13 and I was about 14 or 15. All of a sudden she starts groaning and thrashing slightly. I knew not to trust what might come next. But instead of getting up, walking over, and waking her, I froze. I was the proverbial deer in the headlights. I looked down at my hand of cards and tried to concentrate on my next move. I held my breath and prayed my sis would settle back down to sleep.

As she half rose up, like a vampire-like a half dead corpse, she screamed at the top of her lungs,
Fuck you! You god damned prick asshole son of a bitch! FUCK YOU. Fuck you. Fuuuuuuck. fuck you.............................fuck.

She snored, sighed, and turned over. She fell back asleep.

My granny, she never looked up from her hand of cards. As she played her next card, she casually said, I had no idea Little Sis had started to use language like that. Then she told me not to say anything or tease my sister after she woke up because Granny didn’t want Little Sis to be embarrassed.

I miss my granny still.

25 comments:

Kristina P. said...

Wow, what kind of dream was she having? Hahaha!

And I've never watched Grey's. Doesn't seem like I'm missing too much. They really perform surgery on each other? Like, for fun?

cheatymoon said...

1. I have never watched Grey's, but I would consider it if it were a show I could watch w/ the child.

2. Great post. Interesting about the dreams. I am familiar with night terrors - but not to that extent. Yikes.

3. I think you should get out of my head. I just told my friend a super-nice-tolerant-and-loving grandmother story today. I bet your Gran and mine would have been great friends.
And I miss the hell out of mine too.

Pseudo said...

kristina p - she was probably fighting with me in her dream ; -)

movie - that's weird. Maybe it's the holidays. I miss mine still and she passed in 1989. I dream about her a lot though and sometimes when I wake up it seems like I really was with her.

Anonymous said...

OK, that would FREAK me out. And your grandmother sounds like an absolute doll!

Kristan said...

Haha, yeah, I'm with TFAH: I would freak out, but at least your granny rocks.

Also, I LOVE Grey's. Season 1 was the best, 2 and 3 were up and down, and this one is not up and down so much as half great half SUCK. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

kinda enjoyed the first season of Grey's,it was one of the few things on sunday nights after i would get home from curling...and as i was too wired up to sleep after the game, i got into the habit of winding down with it...couldn't really get into the other seasons tho...just didn't like it that much....

and night terrors are horrible....had to share a room on a band trip with someon who had them...scared the shit out of me...

and i think most grannies are cool like that...they've seen everything and nothing fazes them anymore...

♥ Braja said...

Hilarious response from your grandmother! Over here it would be a simple matter of "ghostly haunted." Even the timings match.

Queen Bee said...

That's a reaction that only Granny's would have. I just lost my Nana and I miss her a lot. This was a good post.

Pseudo said...

thistle - ?? what is curling? You used to be in a band? ah, the curious crumbs you leave for me to ponder.

braja - ghostly haunted....sounds intriguing.

QB - sorry about your Nana. I still miss mine. I often wish I could have shared my children with her.

Pseudo said...

24 and kristan - almost missed you up htere, I scrolled down fast. Well, you'd be surprised what you get used to.

Vodka Mom said...

First, I am laughing my ass off here. I can do that because my son has had night terrors for about 8 years now. NO SHIT. You CANNOT wake him up. believe me, I've tried.

And, I LOVE your nana. love her.....may she rest in peace.

Smart Mouth Broad said...

What a very cool granny you had. I think mine would have fainted. Woke up, remembered and fainted again. LOL

Anonymous said...

I love this story. Did your sister have neuro problems like the guy in GA? Did her night terrors go away? Good stories always make you want more!

Mama Dawg said...

Good grief. My daughter just used to sleep walk and mumble in her sleep. Nothing like your poor sister.

You're granny is awesome, though.

Pseudo said...

vodka mom- sorry about your son's night terrors, hope they pass soon. my sister's did.

SMB LOL I love the double fainting.

Star - I don't remember them finding anything. she's in her 40's and fine now. but a glass of wine at night is probably helping her sleep soundly.

mama- LOML used to walk in her sleep? glad she passed that stage. that's scary in a different way. and thanks, my granny was most awesome, even if I do say so myself.

Anonymous said...

Y'know, I felt sorry for your sister at first... but damn this was a funny story!

(But I think the prospect of a dream that it was raining blood will keep my own self awake a bit longer than usual tonight.)

Anonymous said...

Whoa, coolest Granny EVER. That must have been quite a dream, heh.

Not into Grey's. I'm a guy, so I can say that without being shunned, right? I hope...

Lori said...

Your grandma sounds like she was wonderful in many many ways. In part, this story was funny because of the way you describe it and I have been around people having night terrors, and they scared the crap out of me.
I had night terrors when I was young also and scared my siblings half to death. There are still times when my nightmares are pretty similar to night terrors(at least that is what my husband and other's tell me)and they are not pleasant or funny. They seemed to get worse after I got hurt and also had post tramatic stress disorder from it.

Does your sister ever have them now?
I watched the first season to Grey's and loved it but then lost interest. Hope you are having a nice time with your daughter home!

Anonymous said...

curling...a curious canadian sport involving ice (likely why you haven't heard of it LOL) and brooms and big granite rocks...actually scottish in origin

and it was a school band...not a Della Thurston rockstar band kind of thing...

pretty vanilla really

Anonymous said...

Man, that story made me miss my Granny too.

Robin said...

What a great story, your granny sounds like she was awesome. We were lucky to grow up in a 2-family house with my grandma upstairs, so we saw her all the time. She had color tv (we had B&W), sugar cereal like fruit loops (forbidden in our house) and a bottomless supply of cookies (ditto). She died three years ago, and I still miss her (for herself, not the cookies).

My sister had night terrors too, only hers were that burglers were breaking into the house and stealing my parents. I remember being more annoyed at being woken up than being scared. Nice, eh?

Robin said...

PS - Happy Thanksgiving!

Ash said...

Your granny sounds like a pistol - love it!! Your poor sister. Wow.

And Grey's, yeah, I find myself thinking that the writers are getting lazy. Every single patient in that hospital has an issue that somehow every doc who's having an issue that week can somehow use that lesson to "solve" something in their world.

I want to scream at the t.v. "the guy with the leg around his neck yeah, he's in pain - It's not about YOU!!"

Whew - maybe I need to take a break.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

J'Ollie Primitives said...

Just a teeny tiny bit too much fantasy on Gray's to enjoy it this season. Why oh why did the writers choose to dip down to the bottom of the imagination barrel and have the interns doing surgery on each other???
Your grandmother sounds like a fascinating and wise woman.

Anonymous said...

I've never watched Grey's but I've heard that recently it's been grasping as some serious ratings straws.

Your story telling about the dreams had me sitting in that room with you. Very vividly retold. I'm not sure I would have fared well through all of that. I feel for your Little Sis, I used to have some really bad recurrent nightmares as a kid, thankfully they have dissipated now.

Did you ever tell her about that dream with your Granny?