Grandma Goes All Mama Bear

I got to spend several hours of Hurricane Irene blissfully doped up on prescription muscle relaxants.

Last Saturday I sustained my first real ("real" meaning during a game) roller derby injury: a wee little concussion. There was a pile-up, I don't remember how it happened, and I ended up as the filling in a skater sandwich.

So I have been resting. You know, as much as one can when home with a five-year-old all day.

After several days my head was feeling worse, not better, so I called my mom to watch Ryan so I could see a doctor. My mom insisted on driving me to my appointment, even though I had been driving just fine all week, which meant Ryan had to come along too.

You will be shocked to hear that Ryan had no interest in waiting around a medical building for two hours. Or that he had difficulty with the transition from sitting next to me to being dragged off to the cafeteria for lunch by his Grandma.

I was not there, but I imagine there were the usual theatrics: crying, yelling, throwing himself on the floor in protest. My mom ordered him to get up; he refused. She got stern with him; he was unimpressed.

Then an old man took the liberty of yelling at Ryan. "You get up right now! Raaagh! Raaaagh! Get off my lawn!"*

That's when Grandma whipped around and got all Mama Bear on his ass. Beautifully-manicured claws came out.

"You shut up!" she shouted at the old man. "First of all, you have no business yelling at this child you don't know. Second, you're yelling at a young autistic boy who...:

"Oh," the man interjected, suddenly apologetic, "I didn't know."

"Well maybe you should think before you start yelling at a stranger's kid."

My mom got some lunch into Ryan, and after that they had a lovely couple of hours waiting for me.

Nobody yells at my baby but me. And his Grandma.



*Like I said, I wasn't there for this part, so think of this as a dramatic reenactment.