Grandma’s ‘take home’ gift!
Grandma, lying in her comfortable bed, heard her door opening.
“Hello, grandma!” said her teenage granddaughter, as she swept into the room.
“Hello, my dear girl!” said Grandma. “How nice of you to see me today! I missed you yesterday!”
“Oh grandma, I had such fun yesterday!”
“You did; come sit and tell your grandmother all about it,” said grandma as she shifted a bit, and lovingly made place for her granddaughter. “So tell me what did you do?”
“Oh grandma, you know the malls are open, so I went shopping, and since I was out, called Susan and Kumar, and we went over to a bar and had a few beers. It was such fun, grandma!”
“Ah my child, I hope you wore a mask while doing all this?”
“You can’t sip a beer with a mask on, can you, grandma?” said the teenage girl, and they both laughed heartily imagining the scene.
“Looks like you’ve brought a gift for me?” asked the grandmother staring at a covered bowl, “Open it, dear, so grandma can know what you’ve brought me from the outside world!”
The scream that came from the old lady echoed round the house and even to the neighbour’s and the street below, as her granddaughter uncovered the bowl, and the green and yellow virus sprang out, caught the old lady around her throat and slowly entered her lungs.
A few days later, the family lit her funeral pyre. Grandpa couldn’t come for the funeral as he was beginning to feel sick!
Gruesome as this story may sound, this is exactly what we do, when we from the younger generation break norms prescribed to keep the virus away.
I spoke to a group of youngsters a few months ago, just after the lockdown had been imposed and asked them what they felt about being locked in at home. I felt so glad as youngster after youngster talked about it being a necessary sacrifice to keep their parents and grandparents alive and safe.
“If we don’t catch the virus, we are saving their lives!” they all said.
Rightly so!
“What they don’t know,” said the virus, chuckling, “Is that many of them never know I’ve got into them, and it’s only when a senior member picks it up at home, they realize they were asymptomatic all along, as they mixed and mingled with each other and loafed round without precautions! Ha, ha, ha!”
I personally know someone who went shopping, bought the best of delicacies for all at home, from the beginning of the lockdown. Today, she lives, while the two older ones are dead!
“Please don’t warn them, Bob!” mutters the virus angrily, “I quite like being a take home gift!”
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Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist with an estimated readership of 6 million. He also conducts a short-term writer’s course. Contact him at bobsbanter@gmail.com for more details.