This week I’ve learned that I’m terrible grandson with no guilt. Recently, my grandmother came over for dinner along with a family friendwho picked her up , since neither my parents or I wanted to. She walked in sluggishly with a cane, and mentioned that she had fallen in her apartment last week and hurt her back and it was killing her.  We were surprised to hear the news since none of us were aware this fall had occured, most likely, because none of us cared.  Now, I this may sound mean to most people, but you have to understand who my grandmother really is.  I’ll try to sum it up as quickly as possible. You see, I’m her only grandchild and my fondest memory of her, to date, was being five years old and watching her violently fall on the Teddy Ruxspin Display at Toys R Us  commiting involuntary manslaughter on at least five Teddy Ruxpins.  Now, I’m sure my immediate concern for the Teddy Ruxpins, over her, left a bad taste in her mouth, but at least the Teddy Ruxspin would tell me stories.  She, on the other hand, would tell my mom she was concerned with the size of my nose. As a kid, I remember being insanely jealous when my friends would get $100 from their grandparents for their birthday, or even worse, for no reason at all.  Here’s $100 “just for being you”, I would imagine the card would read, “For being you and having a normal boy nose”.  For the times my grandmother would actually remember my delivery day, the gifts were far from crisp Benjamin Franklins. Once, for my 22nd birthday, she gave me a card that said “To a very special teenager” and inside was a shiny gift card to Anderson’s for $2.50.  I wish I had been there to see that transaction.  Most likely she ordered a small cone and when the cashier went to give her the change she pondered for a minute then went “put that on a gift card.  My grandson’s not old enough to drink yet, so he can take a date here”.   So now here we are, in the present, finishing up dinner. Our family friend didn’t feel comfortable taking my accident prone grandmother back to her apartment so my parents offered my services, both mentioning at the same time “Matthew can take her”, which is the adult version of going ”not it”.   On the drive back, after 15 minutes of awkward silence, my grandmother decided to continue with the theme of awkwardness by asking me if I would help her change into her pajamas when we got back.   Immediately I started thinking of excuses.  I was like “Ohh I would..but I’m not going to”.  In the end I convinced her to sleep in her jeans or ask someone at the front desk to help her. I actually think this was a ploy to screw me up more than I already am.  Sure helping my grandmother change into her PJ’s is the fastest way to end my days of maintaining a healthy erection, but I’m not quite ready to give that privilege up.  After I dropped her off and drove away my Catholic guilt started to kick in.  I remembered that quote from the Bible when Jesus denies the person into heaven giving the example “when you didn’t feed the hungry, you didn’t feed me”.  I wondered if I might face the same scrutiny one day. ”When you didn’t change your Grandmother into her PJ’s, you didn’t change me”.  But I would like to believe even Jesus understands that there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed. Feeling better about my decision as well as my ability to understand how Jesus’s brain works I ended up sleeping like a baby that night remembering the soft gentle words of my mother, years ago, when she would say ”Teddy Ruxspin is in Heaven Now”.