My Grand-Baby Is Better Than Yours
The Grand-Baby Face Off, or the My Grand-Baby is Better than Yours contest between two grandmas is nothing to get caught between.
You’ll want to get off the street when these two meet in the noonday sun.
My Baby is Better than Yours is not a selfish, irrational contest. It is a time honored tradition between grandmothers, and proves how much they love their grandchildren.
A baby is supposed to be the universal peace keeper, the one thing that can bring all mankind together. A baby waltzes in with its mom and right away, people turn around and stare as if Marilyn Monroe just came in wearing a tight sweater.
(Actually, that may be the baby that turned around and checked out her tight sweater for reasons well known to babies.)
I was at a beauty salon getting a pedicure the other day, relaxing with my feet in warm, soapy water. Those who think this is a waste of time and money have never sat in one of those massage chairs.The chair has a little remote with tiny pictures of fingers and a fist on different buttons.
For your Massage-While-You-Wait, you can choose the tiny picture of a fist pummeling up and down your back, or a fist kneading, or pushing, pulling, stroking, or yanking.
You can even choose a tiny picture of two people dragging you across the room by your hair and throwing you from side to side while you bounce off the floor. These two people are French and are known as Apache Dancers.
After they throw you around for awhile and drag you by the hair, you can have strong drink. (Please don’t expect strong drink at the beauty salon.)
After that, all you need is Marilyn to do your pedicure, although I’d prefer George Clooney, myself.
Our neighbor picked up four of these big massage chairs from somewhere, and I was sorely tempted to buy one. I’d have had to install it in the backyard, but oh, what bliss! I could train my dog, Sugar, to give me pedicures, at least until George Clooney had graduated from Beauty Finishing School.
There was a baby in the salon while I was there, getting her nails done.
Actually, her mom was getting her nails done, and grandma was sitting next to her watching the baby. This baby didn’t cry while I was there; she didn’t talk either, but that may have been because she was lying low, picking up vocabulary as fast as she could.
She was also listening to the compliments about her sterling qualities. Just the fact that she didn’t cry was enough to start an avalanche of them:
“She was so good in line, yesterday. Didn’t cry once.” (This from Grandma.)
“Babies who are healthy don’t cry. Mine never cried.”(This from the beauty salon owner.)
“She’s already got two teeth, and she’s only four months old!” (Grandma, again.)
“Mine came with me to work every day, until they ran away to college at the age of ten.” (Salon owner.)
“She goes to sleep right when she’s supposed to, and sleeps through the night.”(Grandma.)
“Mine never even pooped, they were so good.” (Lying sack of crap salon owner.)
Grandma is starting to sweat by now; she’s stumped for something to top that. She’ll never top it; her daughter is done with her manicure, and they’ll have to leave.
Besides which, Grandma lacks the skills the salon owner has, which is how to talk to all kinds of people, and reassure them that their flesh-eating rash did NOT come from her salon.
Meanwhile, after Grandma has left with her daughter and granddaughter, stumbling out, a broken woman, I’m left marveling at something even stranger and more miraculous than a baby who grows teeth when she’s supposed to:
The woman doing my pedicure is Caucasian!
Top that, Grandma.
