Grannies Gone Twilight, or Why Do I Think About These Things?

In response to the colossal tragedgy of a fail I committed earlier this week, I have been thinking overtime about Twilight. Trying to study its many facets, understand its depths, analyze its characters, motifs and themes.

Actually, I'm just kidding. I have a job people, I don't have time for that.

But what I can do to make up for my ginormous faux pas is figure out ways to make every single thing that happens to me at any given point in time relate to Twilight.

Case in point:

Today is Thursday. Not a particularly Twi-lighty day. But Thursday is the day that my grandmother and her friends all go to the mall to eat lunch and shop. Every Thursday, unless there is a holiday or natural disaster, you can find them at the same table, eating from the same food court restaraunt. G Mother (my grandmother's gangster rap alias) likes Taco Bell. She has Taco Bell EVERY THURSDAY.

I eat at the mall alot, because my two favorite things in the whole wide world are food and clothes, and the Pennsylvania real estate group that owns our mall very conveniently put them together in the same building. I'd like to think they did that just for me. It makes me feel like a valued customer.

Anyway, I ate lunch with my G Mother and her friends today, and they spent the entire meal discussing all the various aliments they are currently suffering from. I have heard that when you get old in the South, the conversation always turns either to:

• Diseases
• Someone who has recently died
• Kids these days
• A funeral you just attended
• Your last doctor's visit
• What time you will be going to visitation.

As I sat there, my G Mother talked about whatever it was that was wrong with her (I can't really remember, which is sad because it proves that I wasn't really paying attention to what she was saying and that makes me a bad grandchild) and then listening to her friend describe some way to cure it, (ok, I actually did tune in a little on this one, but obviously not enough because all I can remember is something about "rolling it on a Coke can" and "it" was a body part, and that's all I know) I began to think about Twilight.

Why are there no G Mother's in Twilight?

Why are there only hot, sexy, young vampires in Twilight? I know the Volturi were all paper-thin and dusty looking, possibly like a grandparent, but you never really know their human age, do you? (Actual question looking for an actual answer! Likes long walks on the beach and pina colad.....nevermind.) Why the ageism, Steph? Isn't there room for a lovable family matriarch, a grandmother with snowy hair, wizened eyes and a purse full of peppermints? Someone fluffy, in that hard-as-steel-vampire-skin kind of way?

Your very instinct rebels against your Grams as a vampire. Why? Maybe it's because vampires are supposed to be HOT, and if they're not hot, they're supposed to be ghoulish. Or that vampires are supposed to be deadly swift predators. Or maybe it's that hot thing again.

Well, there's no reason why you couldn't bite your Maw Maw and turn her into a vampire, too. The natural conversion process of becoming a vampire brings out your best qualities, enhancing you into devastatingly beautiful creatures. So the odds are good that your Nanny would come out of the whole thing looking like Helen Mirren. Or at least Dame Judy Dench.

As for deadly swift predators, come on. Haven't you always known, deep down inside, that your Gammy had kick butt ninja skills? No? Maybe that was just me. But I know for a FACT that my G Mother could take down a panther or two as one of the Cullen Clan, because when she was young, she ate squirrels. (Hey, it was the South. It was after the Great Depression. Squirrels are tasty. Can you blame her?) The human to squirrel ratio is equal to the vampire to panther ratio, for sure. Maybe.

The best reason for Grandma to be a vampire? No more discussions about how her hip makes her walk funny on one side, and how she's sure that's going to result in knee problems in the future. Cause vampires don't have knees, duh.

Oh, sorry......I mean knee problems.