...but it is downright unnerving when it comes from the mouth of my ninety-five-year-old grandfather. thankfully, it wasn't in a sentence about me, or anyone in my family. he was mid-stream in our predictable sunday-afternoon routine of pasta followed by coffee and cookies followed by monologue of times when he's been screwed over because of his thick accent. but for all the afternoons i've waited patiently through "and so i said, no, YOU need an education!" i've never really heard him use angry-sounding words. this might be partially because he interrupts his story any time there are new people around with a big smile and "how old do you think i am?" followed by the proud display of his photo in the italian community center newpaper winning the asti spumanti for being the oldest italian in town. this also might be because it is essentially difficult to angrily twirl pasta on your plate without getting sauce everywhere, and it's just poor form to waste good sauce. or this might be because being angry gets in the way of his whole back-of-the-hand-against-the-forehead life-is-very-hard schtick where he sighs that he has to take blood pressure medicine. (ninety-five and on ONE pill. life is very hard, indeed.)
and to be fair, he wasn't really angrier than usual; i just didn't know jackass was in grandpa's english vocabulary. maybe he just learned it? he did just get cable, although i assumed it was for the foreign-language news station, not mtv.
so what is the proper form to respond to a 95-year-old guy's first swearing in english in front of granddaughter?
1) "hell, yeah, gramps, bust that shit out"
2) dignified horror: cough into napkin and look around uncomfortably
3) undignified horror: "what the %&$@ did you just say?"
4) concentrate very hard on spaghetti and pretend it didn't happen
5) waste precious time blogging about it instead of working on research project with upcoming deadline
clearly i have made my choice.
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