Here's the stuff I was raised on. Imagine how you'd turn out.
"It only takes five minutes to change your life," my grandmother Rachel chimed in.
"Through a lemon, you might meet a peach," my mother puckered up.
"It's as easy to love a rich many as a poor man," was my grandmother Dolly's darling of a dividend.
"I married three millionaires," she bragged, before bitching about the price of my ginger-ale, in front of the entire Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel. Eloise would have been appalled.
Love me; love my family.
Here's my take on the whole thing, and I'm only twenty-nine-ish.
"Through a lemon, you'll probably meet a bigger lemon--more pulp per pound. Five minutes can sink you into the sewer as fast as it can propel you into seven minutes in heaven--it took my Uncle Lenny straight into Sing Sing, get out of jail cards not included.
As far as Grandma Dolly's three husbands went, I'd really like to see the ones that got away--like the polo player who looked like Clark Gable.
"He didn't have a pot to pee in. I told him, you can't afford me, and I can't afford you. Why are you looking at me like that Holly," she demanded, like one of her husband's oozy oil wells about to detonate.
"How could you let him go? Polo players are caliente!
"It's not like I married a monkey. I never married a monkey to get what I wanted," she snapped her perennial whip of a tail at me.
Actually, she did marry a monkey, but she kind of goes berserk when I mention it.
Later, for that one.
She said that if you took all your troubles and put them in a bag and shook them up, you probably wouldn't trade them with anyone's bag. I never understood the shake your bag stuff, but on most days, I'm pretty happy being me.
I guess she was ok with her bag of stuff. When she was ninety-six, she let out a satisfied sigh and confessed to her companion:
"I had a great life. I f*d a lot."
She died a few weeks later, at home in Palm Beach, looking out at an ocean view.
Go, granny. She'd left us the perfect touch for her tombstone.
Can you imagine what history would be like if people really told it like it is? Or, the Bible. We'd all stop tuning into HBO and check out what Delilah was up to. Check her out, take notes and make a gazillion off of the video.
If you're not into the good book, picture this: A wretched, sleety day, picketers outside a graveyard; strikers striking out against their hourly wage and life-long karma. Loved ones wallowing, whining and wheezing past one grave, then another, until they reach their destination--a relative they envied, loved, despised, didn't really know or particularly care to; with an All-American jackpot of last names: Dolly Ross Knight Harris. A faded photo and crisply chiseled calligraphed slogan:
"I f*d a lot."
A teenage girl begins to giggle uncontrollably, until her mother, who is hell-bent on the dent the casket has made on her Gucci allowance, wallops the child across the face.
"Show some respect," she commands.
At long last, silence.
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