Day 17

Your Favorite Memory

Aww, I like this prompt.

Okay, I was pretty young, maybe 6 or 7, and my mom had been super busy with work. My sister, Stephanie, and I had been staying with our great grandmother, Virginia. We just called her Grandma (or Gramma, I suppose). Grandma and Mom talked one morning and Mom said that we had the choice between staying with Grandma for another day or going over to our cousin Keri’s house.

I’m going to give brief backstory here.

Keri had babysat us on numerous occasions, and while I like her now, I hated her back then. I have no idea why. Maybe she was too bossy. She had a son named Austin and Stephanie liked spending time with him, but he was a little young for me. Anyways, I really loved spending time with my grandma. She was my favorite person on the planet for a really really long time. She was fun, but strict. She read to me and let me play with her makeup. I miss her so much.

Okay, back to the story.

Stephanie decided she wanted to go to Keri’s, but I wanted to stay with Grandma. So Grandma said she’d take Steph over. We drove in her little red hatch back over the other side of town and dropped Steph off. Then, on the way back, it was just Grandma and me. At a stop light, we realized we were behind an ice-cream truck and we both wanted ice-cream really badly. I don’t know what it is about those songs, but I think that there are subliminal messages in them convincing you that a cold creamy dessert will save your life. Anyway, when the light turned green, my grandmother started cutting cars off trying to get directly behind this truck. It was like we were on a high-speed chase. If she had access to a siren and lights, I am more than 100% convinced they both would have been on. It was hilarious. I’m sure the truck driver was terrified. But we followed him until he pulled into an apartment complex and stopped, and we pulled up behind him and stopped too, completely COPS-style. We got our ice-cream and it was delicious. I remember when we finally got back to Grandma’s house, we had to hide the wrappers because she was worried that Grandpa would be mad if he knew she’d been eating ice-cream. It was an amazing day.

I told that story to my grandma the night she died, and while she was in a coma, I’m sure that she heard it and was laughing just as hard as I was at the memory.