My Fake Grandma

August 12

I awoke abruptly. Hazy. The room was dark with tiny flickering lights. A few people coughed. I got elbowed in the rib.

This isn’t my room. I’m in a plane.

Grandma: Let’s swap seats, i need to pee a lot and you can have the window seat.

I hesitantly obliged. She made it sound like i was doing her a favour, when in reality i don’t care where i sat.

At this point you’re wondering- why is your grandma in this story? Well, this is a bit of a rollercoaster involving good and bad karma.

I was one of the first to board the plan and in front of me was an elderly woman struggling to lift her hand luggage. I carried it for her into the plane, she starts calling me her Grandson.

I found out she’s visiting her actual grandson, who is an architect. Told me stories about him, Ilistened out of politeness.

Cute girl sits across me in the aisle. I notice the wedding ring. That didn’t stop me flirting. Its pretty harmless.

flight goes into full swing. Fake grandma wont stop talking, cute girl actually thought she was my grandma. I wanted to keep flirting but Fake Grandma keeps elbowing me to get my attention.

Fake Grandma takes shoes off. Overpowering smell of cheese took over. She shoves her feet in the crevice between the seats in front of her and proudly tells me how comfortable she is.

The Stewardess comes around and goes through food options. I thank her for her politeness. Fake Grandma ignores her and wants to order something off menu. Stewardess gets visibly pissed off, but staying professional. She must also think we’re family.

Fake Grandma complains about the whole flight.

* Its too chilly.

* there’s monitors but no remote or earphones to listen to it. (No individual monitors)

* complains to stewardess that theres no available seats so she cant lay down.

* complains about reclined chairs in front, giving her less room.

* also complains about people behind- apparently they kept pushing her seat back in when she reclined in.

* food comes, complains that its too bland. ‘Needs salt’, ‘coffee tastes like mud’

Overall just generally rude. The stewardess would be polite, offering drinks with a resounding “ma’am” and ‘please’ and she’d respond by either staring at her blankly with no thank-you’s.

In between complaints i dozed off. Headphones in, tablet on, or kindle. I am not related to her and the novelty of having a fake grandma died off when she asked me to pour cream and sugar into her coffee for her. (I couldn’t refuse, i’m too nice.)

I woke up to a strong smell of eucalyptus. If you don’t know what that is, its a strong minty smell, traditionally used by either elderly individuals, someone who has a stuffed nose. You can probably guess that Fake Grandma was having a good time with this. Yolo’ing in the plane.

In between dozing off to sleep, harmless flirting and grandma complaining i actually had a pleasant flight. There were no screaming babies, i wasn’t too bored and i’m seeing my sister very soon.

As we got off the plane i waved goodbye to Fake Grandma, god bless her rude ass’ed soul, and kept talking to cute girl that i met across the aisle.