My cell-phone chimes rang, indicating a text. I picked up my phone. The text was from... Great Grandma Gloucester?
I texted back, "Hey, GGMa!" Then "Nice 2 read U!" "U can text!"
GGMa: "I've just learned." "And you're already using 1337 with me!"
Me: "My respect for U and Ur texting."
GGMa: "I'm flattered." "Is Ur mom with you?"
"Hey, Mom. It's Great-Grandma Gloucester! She wants to text you." I handed her my phone.
Mom fingered things into the phone, thumbing one last key with a flourish, followed by a grimace. "Auto-correct again!" she said to me. "It definitely has a sense for the absurd." She returned, and fingered in more, until -- "Oh, my grating hemlocks!" That last word came out faint, and she began a slow collapse.
I managed to get to her in time, to set her onto the couch. I picked up the phone and saw the exchange:
Mom: "Hey, Grandma Gloucester!" "How's my pregnant Grandmother-in-Law?"
GGMa: "Jenny, Dear! How did U ever find out?"
Mom had been in the middle of a text when she collapsed: "Sorry, I meant".
Mom was just beginning to recover when my baby sister burst in. "Hey Mommy, Taylor! Great-Grandmother Bainbridge got knocked up a couple months ago! She's having twins!"
Comments
Oh My!
This would never have happened if the Great Grandmother had been using her i.u.d.Phone for protection.
AuP
Disjointed family tree
I have a friend who went to school in the same class as his uncle but this is a bit more extreme.
I ALWAYS disconnect auto-corrupt.
Auto-Corrupt
I've never had auto-corrupt on in the first place.
I've heard of persons with uncles and aunts (and, perforce, nephews and nieces) around their age. This story, of course, is so extreme as to be a parody. (Two pregnant great-grandparents. It did occur to me to wonder if this was a transformation and reality-shift.)
I remember a letter to an advice columnist about (I think) a grandmother walking with her toddler grandson in a stroller. Some friendly strangers approach to say, "Such a cute little boy. Is he your son?"
"No, he's my brother. Mommy always gives me a good allowance when I take him out for a walk."
-- Daphne Xu
Great Grandma learns to text
Wow, these are some competitive Grandma's. It's a cute story, but I have to ask if you've been hanging out with Bru lately.
Time is the longest distance to your destination.
Bru
I automatically thought this sounded like a Bru drabble but its too upbeat his are usually a bit darker.... well done
EllieJo Jayne
Some are dark, sometimes really dark, but
I've been living with the delusion that most of them are rather nice and upbeat (at least the more popular ones). Oh, well.
Also, I take no responsility for Daphne's actions. I claim she was like this already before I started to submit her to my bad influence. I can prove it if necessary ;)
Dark
I have a few seriously dark and depressing stories as well.
-- Daphne Xu
Never Met
We have PMed each other a few times, but I've PMed a lot of people.
A few years ago, after commenting on three of my stories, someone asked if Bru and I were having a contest. No, we weren't -- and still aren't. But we do have similar tastes in setting up the reader and then yanking the rug.
-- Daphne Xu
Yep, auto-correct will get you
Nicely done. And twins too! Think I'd feel faint as well.
>>> Kay
And...
And two different Great-Grandmothers as well, around the same time.
Might it have been a mage or wizard?
-- Daphne Xu
Pregnant octogenarians...
Perhaps it's set twenty years in the future -- after the advent of either nanite or bio printed body replacements.
Quite possibly.
Quite possibly.
-- Daphne Xu
Possible, just, with present technology
Assuming several generations of VERY young parents the greatgrands could be in their 50s and if I remember correctly there have been cases of women conceiving at thoses ages naturally. Then add frozen eggs and IVF ...
At the playground when babysitting:
Be careful on those swings Granduncle Joe. No Grandaunt Anne. You already had one icecream.
My Vision
I admit that I envisioned the great-grandmothers in their eighties getting pregnant. I even envisioned it the natural way, as being "knocked up".
A long time ago, I read about a woman in her sixties getting pregnant through IVF. An editorial cartoon then exaggerated the notion by portraying an elderly woman as pregnant.
In the spirit of what I'm trying to write and finish now, I also envision their pregnancies as resulting from a transformation and reality-shift.
-- Daphne Xu