How do you brew loose leaf tea?

My grandma is the fucking worst.  I call her Gram, but her name is Rita, and without giving you any additional information you know exactly what she looks like.  Fucking Gram.  Whatever you're imagining right now, yup that's her. When I was in college she sent me a Valentines Day card, addressed to "Daddy", from my dead dog, with $4 in it - and I swear to god every single word in that sentence is true.

She's in her 70s which is pretty young for a grandma.  One thing all young grandmas have in common is poor life choices. Usually old people have an "I ain't got time for that" attitude, they're on season 13 of their life and there's only a few episodes left before the series finale.  Not Gram, she got that time.  She wants all the smoke.  She's a bully, a legitimate menace to society, and the bane of my existence.

I live in a pretty small town, but there’s two good Italian delis near me that my grandma likes to go to when she visits.  One of the delis is named “Pete’s”, which is all she can remember so she calls them “Pete’s” and “not Pete’s” (she’s a real visionary).  So she sends me out to buy her eggplant parmesan for dinner at 4:30 but - spoiler alert - she mixed up the two delis and sent me to the wrong one because she’s old, her memory sucks, and her system is stupid.

So I get home with the food and give it to her.  She takes one bite, then gets up from the table with her plate, slips off into the kitchen, and returns eggplant-less to sit on the couch with the newspaper.  “How was the eggplant Gram?”  She makes this face like she’s trying to do long division in her head and says “well, it wasn’t very good, I threw it away”.  I’m like wait, what?  I just paid for that.  I say “Why did you throw it out?? I would’ve eaten it”.  This bitch doesn’t even look up, licks her finger, turns the page, and says “Well, now we know” and it was the most gangsta shit I’ve ever witnessed in my life.

Fucking Gram...

-Silky Johnson

Staff Writer