- What happens at Grandma’s house stays at Grandma’s house, because your mother has made it very clear she wants nothing to do with me.
2. Giggles are mandatory. Cuddles are expected. Details about your mother’s failing marriage are encouraged.
3. Bedtime is negotiable! Unlike your mother’s insistence on getting married in a courthouse.
4. If you go to the store with Grandma, you’ll get to pick out one toy. Or two. Heck, you can choose as many toys as you want! I could never put a price on your allegiance.
5. Cookies are perfectly acceptable for breakfast. Grandma doesn’t believe in ridiculous notions like “juvenile diabetes” or “unitarian universalism.”
6. Storytime is all the time. Have you ever heard the one about the ungrateful daughter who “forgot” about the family counseling her mother arranged with Father Jenkins who happens to be a very busy man?
7. Expect to be spoiled! And taught the true meaning of Christmas!
8. Good manners are expected at all times. That means always saying “please,” “thank you,” and “our mother made a terrible mistake not baptizing us.”
9. You can watch all the TV you want, whenever you want. If that public school your mother sends you to hasn’t turned you into a sociopath, I suppose neither will Riverdale.
10. Memories are made here! Not “repressed” as your mother would have you believe. She thinks she’s so funny.
11. Sandwiches are crustless, vegetables are forbidden, and there is only one true God: the Holy Father.
12. No parents allowed! Not that your mother would ever come in past the foyer and talk out her issues. She’s always been stubborn like that. I’m not going to be around forever, you know. If your mother wants to have a relationship with me, she better swallow her pride and make an attempt before I’m babbling nonsense in a nursing home or decomposing in the cheapest casket she can find on Craigslist.
13. Ice cream for dinner? You betcha!