WELL, there are a precious few out there who have my secondary phone number. Also known as Grandma's phone number. The most precious of these is my boyfriend, Jordan, and when I didn't answer my cell phone the other day he called the house phone. Grandma picks up and, naturally, assumes that Jordan is calling HER! Not wanting to disillusion her, we played along (I played along, I'm guessing Jordan did, too...) until we eventually got our turn OFF speakerphone and chatted for a good hour by ourselves. It was nice.
When I got back to Grandma she started dropping my least favorite word over and over and over again. She couldn't stop using it. For a long time now she's used this word, she must have just learned it in the last few years; Vicarious.
vi·car·i·ous \vī-ˈker-ē-əs, və-\ adjective
1 a : serving instead of someone or something else b : that has been delegated
2 : performed or suffered by one person as a substitute for another or to the benefit or advantage of another : substitutionary
3 : experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another
4 : occurring in an unexpected or abnormal part of the body instead of the usual one
- vi·car·i·ous·ly adverb -vi·car·i·ous·ness noun
Nearly every phone call over the last few years has featured some exclamation about how overjoyed she is to be vicariously experiencing all these new things through her grandchildren. At the time it was very quaint. Now it's just obnoxious and I've started to abjectly HATE the word.
She was GLOWING when I got off the phone with Jordan. She was absolutely DELIGHTED that he would call HER and isn't it WONDERFUL that he loves her, too!! She went on to detail how in love with him SHE is, and then, so help me, she said it.
"I'm getting my masters vicariously, and now I have a vicarious boyfriend, too!"
Deliberately stirring our dinner and putting a pleasant face on I said "Oh no Grandma! There's nothing vicarious about him, he's all mine and you can't have him!" and smiled. Hushing her protests of "but, but..." I said "sorry! he's off limits!" and laughed and served dinner and changed the subject.
There's a lot I can tolerate. I can tolerate her near possession of my degree, I can tolerate her showing me off to all her friends even though she doesn't really know who I am and that's not what she's showing off anyway. I can tolerate cooking dinner, cleaning up dinner, and making sure all the little picky things she wants done are done all while in a masters program that is finally getting in gear. But Jordan is 900 miles away, and that's hard enough.
Back off Grandma. You're a creeper.
1 a : serving instead of someone or something else b : that has been delegated
2 : performed or suffered by one person as a substitute for another or to the benefit or advantage of another : substitutionary
3 : experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another
4 : occurring in an unexpected or abnormal part of the body instead of the usual one
- vi·car·i·ous·ly adverb -vi·car·i·ous·ness noun
Nearly every phone call over the last few years has featured some exclamation about how overjoyed she is to be vicariously experiencing all these new things through her grandchildren. At the time it was very quaint. Now it's just obnoxious and I've started to abjectly HATE the word.
She was GLOWING when I got off the phone with Jordan. She was absolutely DELIGHTED that he would call HER and isn't it WONDERFUL that he loves her, too!! She went on to detail how in love with him SHE is, and then, so help me, she said it.
"I'm getting my masters vicariously, and now I have a vicarious boyfriend, too!"
Deliberately stirring our dinner and putting a pleasant face on I said "Oh no Grandma! There's nothing vicarious about him, he's all mine and you can't have him!" and smiled. Hushing her protests of "but, but..." I said "sorry! he's off limits!" and laughed and served dinner and changed the subject.
There's a lot I can tolerate. I can tolerate her near possession of my degree, I can tolerate her showing me off to all her friends even though she doesn't really know who I am and that's not what she's showing off anyway. I can tolerate cooking dinner, cleaning up dinner, and making sure all the little picky things she wants done are done all while in a masters program that is finally getting in gear. But Jordan is 900 miles away, and that's hard enough.
Back off Grandma. You're a creeper.
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