Tall Tale

I leave for Europe in 36 hours. So last night I visited my grandparents in Michigan... I love them so much sometimes it almost hurts. My dad always told me crazy stories growing up... Stories so ridiculous I never could tell if they were true or not. As stupid as it sounds, it's very much like the movie Big Fish. Anyway, my grandpa is the same way. He's been pretty sick lately though and so he didn't tell very many stories last night. My grandma, on the other hand, DID tell me a new story I enjoyed very much... The weirdest part is, since they are getting older and both have been having health problems, they started showing me stuff... Newspaper clippings, photographs, records, etc that prove these ridiculous stories really happened. Here's what I learned last night about my grandmother:

She got married when she was 16 in 1955. In 1960, when she was 21, she and my grandpa decided to go to the races like they often did. On this particular day they announced they needed a driver to take the place of someone who dropped out. My grandma volunteered. She drove a red car that she, "thought was the prettiest" out of all the other cars. Then, with pin curlers in her hair and my grandpa sitting in the audience with my dad (who would have been 4 at the time), she won the race. There's a picture of her holding the checkered flag with a trophy. I asked her why she did it. She said, "I don't really know. I was young. I wasn't scared of anything and I guess it sounded like fun." She was later told the car she drove had never won a race before. I like to think it was the winning car simply because my grandma was driving it.

I would hope when the time came for me to race, I would have the guts to jump in the car.. Even if it was a faulty car, if I hadn't planned on racing, if I had curlers in my hair, even with the stereotypes all women have bent under for years. Against all the worldly odds, to compete and to win.

Emotionalism

"Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask for charity, let them, instead, start manufacturing charitable feelings for themselves and not notice this is what they are doing... Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling..."-- Screwtape

.... Guilty.....

This book is killing me.