March 22, 2004

My grandmother recently purchased a computer, and, living close by and knowing a little bit about them, I became the responsible party for everything - picking the PC out, setting it up, teaching her the ins and outs of how to use it, signing her up for an internet account, and everything else you could possibly think of. She even looked to me when it came time to come up with the user name/email address for her internet account.

Today, after school, I had to stop by to get said internet account set up. She had already chosen an ISP (thankfully), so it was just a matter of calling them and getting her started. It wasn't that simple, though. We had to go to their office to pick up the software and all that good stuff.

We took her car, a newer Ford Crown Victoria (standard old lady car), and I got to drive her. My grandmother isn't the most comfortable person behind the wheel. She handed me the keys, we hopped in, and off we went.

There. You're all filled in. Now for the interesting part.

As we neared the stop sign at the end of her street, she began to tell me a story; a rather personal story. The story began, as most of my grandmother's stories did, with, "Today I was on the commode..."

Wonderful. I usually find these stories funny because they're so personal and she doesn't mind telling a roomful of people, but I had a feeling I wasn't going to like where this one was going. Even though she was sure to tell it in an inadvertently funny way by using her "different" words and phrases, I was feeling uncomfortable. And by "different" words, I mean stuff like "Commode" instead of "toilet," "BM" instead of "bowel movement," etc.

She went on to tell me that after sitting on the "commode," she dropped her car keys in it. Then, she told me how she was glad she saw them before she flushed, which lead me to believe she went in after the keys which were now resting at the bottom of the Poo-tomac.

The point of her story was that her remote door lock thingie didn't work anymore. She was locked out of her car, and a passerby asked if she was having trouble as she was discovering this little fact. I then asked if the key would work to unlock the door. This made her laugh and say that that's what the passerby had said, and that they must've thought she was the "dumbest thing that ever was," I believe is how she phrased it.

This lead me to believe that she had dropped the keys in a public toilet - unless there was a stranger walking around in her backyard under the carport where she keeps it. It just keeps getting better.

Long story short, I handled car keys that had been pissed on in a public toilet, and, at best, had been "cleaned" by running them under a faucet for a few seconds. Thank you, grandma.