Frankenpanties

I love my nana. She's wonderful in every way that a Grandma should be. She bakes pies, makes jams, and sews and knits clothes that don't deserve to be incinerated alongside fringed gloves and harem pants. Granted, she does insist on bringing her special brand of "Candies as Hard as Concrete" to the movies (she must be the exception that proves the rule that all Brits have bad teeth), and jabbing you in the ribs repeatedly, just in case her deafeningly whispered inappropriate comment about a possibly "fruity" character on screen didn't catch your attention, but, I do love her dearly because every so often she is a gem of comedy genius.

I want to say about seven years ago, my nana and grandpa decided that it was time they join the civilized world and get a cell phone. It was second hand, pay-as-you-go, and expressly for emergency purposes only, much like the similarly aged Kendall Mint Cake that sits in the glove-compartment of their car should they ever get stranded on a mountain. As far as I know the phone sits in the pantry switched off and is only touched, although diligently so, once every six months when my grandpa switches it on and then off again to make sure it still works. The only other time it has seen the light of day is when they first got it and my mum, delighting at the idea of not being the least tech-savvy person in the room, insisted that she show them the wonder of text messages. My nana, my mum and I squeezed onto a two-seater sofa with me in the middle. My mum positioned nana with her new phone in her palms, whipped out her own and typed in (with one fore-finger I might add, not the more experienced two-thumb technique) the word "Hello". Nana's phone chirped that a text had been received. Mum beamed while nana stared perplexed. I, slightly exasperated, opened up the text message so that the screen on nana's lap shone up at her the word "Hello". Nana put the phone to her ear and said, very politely, "Hello?"

More recently, I received a package of underwear from my nana. They were in lieu of a chocolate Easter egg which naturally couldn't be mailed. Others may think it strange that I periodically get bras and panties from my 73 year old nana but they are always very pretty and nearly always fit. Given the exorbitant prices they charge for underwear in places like Victoria's Secret, I'm happy to keep riding this silky, lace-trimmed gravy train. This time they were lovely, bright, Easter colors, but for the first time, and quite surprisingly, the package included thongs. Lacy, racy thongs. A note from my Nana contained within the package explained that she hadn't intended on buying me thongs, she had picked them up inadvertently and that while she deemed them "quite improper," my mum and aunt had insisted that she send them as I would certainly like and use them...no doubt in my second job as a streetwalker. It wasn't until I asked my mum about it that it became clear just how upset Nana was by the thongs. Apparently, in a hushed (which as you learned in the first paragraph is anything but) and very earnest discussion, supposedly out of ear shot of the men, my nana had revealed the offending garments to my mum and aunt, and explained that she was going to, very industriously, take the two pairs of thongs, cut them up and sew the two front portions together to make one whole pair of panties. As I said, my mum's protestations that I would be fine with the thongs and indeed find them preferable to an "envelope of butchered underwear," won out, but I can't help feeling I would have enjoyed the Frankenpanties more.