Page 60 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
and both she and, therefore, my mother are mortified. I, however, will save the day: “Mom, you shouldn’t say ‘shit’ when you make a mistake,” says the perfectly mannered youngster. Color returns to Grandma’s face, and now she is sitting up with pride. My mother relaxes. “You should never say ‘shit,’” I continue, unfortunately not leaving well enough alone, something that I’m not sure that I ever really learned. (Pause, two beats.) “When you make a mistake, you shouldn’t say ‘shit.’” (Two more beats.) “You should say ‘fuck!’” While I heard this story repeatedly over the years (with pride?), I never had the aftermath described to me, and, based upon reasons that will become clear later, I’m glad that (as I infer) it was not repeated to my father, at least not contemporaneously.
Grandma cooked two things that I can still taste: mandel bread, an almond cake, the name of which is sometimes rendered mandelbrodt (which, believe it or not, means “almond cake,” not “math professor and chaos theorist”) but is pronounced “maahhndullbread” (in Brooklyn) and is very much like biscotti, except, in my view, far better (please note how I here resist making a joke about Jewish butterfly effects); and pletzl, a baked Polish delicacy that is much like “onion board” but is softer and can fit in your hand. It is best eaten buttered and fresh from the oven. Grandma also liked to give me five dollars occasionally, in addition to the mandel bread and pletzl.
We would visit Grandma on the weekends and watch Roller Derby with her on her black-and-white TV! As Wikipedia describes it,
Roller derby is a contact sport played by two teams of five members roller skating in the same direction around a track. Game play consists of a series of short matchups (“jams”) in which both teams designate a scoring player (the “jammer”) who scores points by lapping members of the opposing team. The teams attempt to assist their own jammer while hindering the opposing jammer—in effect, playing both offense and defense simultaneously.
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