little...

little old women sit alone on uncomfortable plastic chairs in department store resturaunts, mittens piled neatly to the left of a cheap cafeteria tray and they order everything on the menu even though they can only eat seven bites before their small stomachs are full. these women sit for hours spooning watery jello into their mouths and they think about their grandchildren and great grandchildren and husbands and sons and daughters and neices. .my grandmother is seventy-five and she likes japanese television and twelve dollar candy bars. she is diabetic. last week, she missed the end of a made-for-tv movie and spent the next two days on the telephone with a cable company trying to find out if they would send her a video cassette tape of the entire film. they said no. on valentine's day, she called me to tell me what sort of man i am to marry, "someone ordinary, not too special, just nice." when you've got nothing else to do, the whole world feels like a mission.when i am eighty-four, i want to spend my days smoking opium and watching day time television. if i have grandchildren, i will set aside five dollars a week for each of them and if i don't, i will own three cats.