Stories We'll Tell Our Grandkids

J and I recently ended up on a double date with my grandparents. We walked back and forth on the boardwalk in Brooklyn while listening to stories and eating vanilla swirl ice cream in cones on a hot summer night.  While my grandpa and J chatted behind us, my grandma told me stories of when her and my grandpa got married and lived in Ukraine.  It made me think of stories that we’ll be telling our own grandkids one day.  I started to think about what events have stuck in my mind and what I might want to pass on to future generations. Whatever we tell them, I hope that it will all be funny one day.

When we got married, we started learning a lot of adult stuff together, as all couples do, from critical domestic issues (the “right” way to fold towels) to traveling together (more on that later!) to buying our first home together. I think I’ll look back one day and realize that all these stories that came from figuring each other out are actually quite funny, maybe even stories we’ll tell our grandkids one day. Although I think by that point, the stories will be so grossly exaggerated over time that they’ll less closely mimic reality and more closely resemble a made up tale.

We’ll most likely tell our grandkids about the time we went to our good friend’s wedding in San Diego and my ill-fated attempt to iron J’s dress shirt 15 minutes before the ceremony start time caused us to be late and seated next to the camera equipment.  I remember it like it was yesterday, J telling me he feels like he slept in a dumpster and me trying to convince him a little wrinkle here and there was the new shabby chic style. It didn’t work. We’ll probably tell them about the time we moved into our first apartment together and made coffee by boiling water in a frying pan due to our limited supply of kitchen equipment.  Don’t try that at home, it didn’t taste well.

We can also tell them how over the almost 2 years we’ve lived together, I’ve slowly taken over 90% of the closet space in our apartment.  I was feeling ambitious one day and suggested that J really only needs 1 out of 6 drawers in the dresser and I can help him figure out how to fit everything, while I take the other 5 drawers.  I thought I was being really helpful.  Based on the look on his face, I got the hint that maybe that wasn’t one of my best ideas.

I remember the time we went to Texas to visit J’s brother and booked the return ticket for the following year. As soon as we realized, we scrambled to call the airline and change the ticket date without paying an exorbitant fee since the flight was only in a few hours. Maybe we won’t tell them that story.

We’ll most definitely tell them about the time J made us smoothies after the gym and while pushing down the fruit with a wooden spoon, accidentally got said wooden spoon caught in the blender.  That made for a delicious banana raspberry smoothie intermixed with chunks of wood.  As we watched The Wire, we couldn’t help but laugh as we paused every few seconds to spit out pieces of wood. Yes, we still drank the smoothie… and I can’t offer much reasoning to explain why.IMG_3009

Anyway, we’ll probably laugh about everything together one day, even if at the time it seemed completely ridiculous.  And if somehow the stories get twisted and over-exaggerated, it’s alright.  I have this blog as written evidence to show how it all really went down.

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