Foot in the Mouth

Foot in the Mouth

Once upon a time, I worked for the folks at Goodwill. And one of the girls who worked in the back of one of the stores was talking about the babies going to see their grandmother over the previous weekend. And she'd talked about this a couple times, and I'd just assumed that she was referring to her taking her kids up to see her mother.

Then it hit me that she wasn't referring to her kids, but rather, her grandkids.

And rather than letting my brain do the math, my big dumb mouth opens and out comes: "Candy, what do you mean grandkid? You're not much older than me!"

With the self-righteous indignation that seems reserved for those raising 3 kids on welfare in a trailer park, she says, with the utmost of haught in her voice "I'm thirty-two!"

I was right around 26 at the time, and it floored me. To know that the 32-year-old woman (who did not look 32--she easily passed for early 20's), was a grandmother twice over. She went on to explain (with something that wasn't quite pride, yet wasn't far from it) that she'd had her daughter when she was 15, and her daughter had her first kid at 15, and a second at 16.

This story made me think of that, this cool December morning....