James Betty Finds Easter Full of Fear, Trembling

Alright, I've tried to come at this story from a few angles and they've all failed. This one centres so much around myself that it makes trying to write it with any sort of objective distance seem like a bad joke. In that vein, for today I'm just going to call myself an archivist to prevent any violation of the journalistic integrity of this publication. But Jeez-Louise does this story have me freaked out.

Earlier this week I thought I would start recording my life 24 hours a day, because last week I decided I was going to start living my life like a work of art and it needed to be documented. I attended my family's Easter celebration on a warm Sunday afternoon with my digital audio recorder in my shirt pocket to put the Betty clan's 25^th annual Easter Egg Battle Royale on record. It's kind of like the Hunger Games, except we destroy food instead of people. Each of the around 40 participants decorate a hard boiled egg and gather on the front lawn, and with everyone standing in a circle all the eggs are flung into the centre repeatedly until only one is left. That one is the winner. It wasn't mine. I finished second. I always finish second. In fact I'm getting a little sick of always being second place. That's how seriously we take this. There's a sash where your name joins the annals of family history. Anything with annals is serious.

But this isn't about me playing second fiddle to someone who should probably have an asterisk next to her win, because my Aunt's a pharmacist so of course she's got some form of doping going on. This is about the conversation I recorded with my Grandmother Muriel before the egg toss, where I realized that it's a pity no one was recording my Grandmother's life, because her knowing there was a witness around might have saved a few lives over the years. There's only one way to tell this story, and it's in Muriel's own words. The following is a transcript of the conversation I had Sunday afternoon with my Grandma Muriel on a sunny lawn.

James Betty: “These eggs would feed a lot of starving people in central Africa, you know.”

Muriel Betty: “They would go bad before they got there if we mailed them, dearie.”

JB: “I know that, it's just the principle of the thing.”

MB: “Just enjoy the game with your family. Don't attach too much to it. The important part is that we're all here, and we're happy there's another spring. It's a rebirth for all of us.”

[long pause]

MB: “Are you going to take issue with the blessing before the meal too?”

JB: “No, the blessing is nice. It's nice to hear someone voice their best wishes.”

MB: “Then why are you being a brat about the game we play?”

JB: “Because it's just a game, and I don't really have much else to say.”

MB: “Oh dearie, you can tell me anything.”

JB: “No I can't.”

MB: “Did I ever tell you about the conscientious objector I killed in 1940?”

JB: “What?”

MB: “He was assigned to be a firefighter in my hometown. One day when he came by my father's farm to buy some eggs I asked him why he hadn't gone to fight with all the other boys in town. He said he wouldn't raise a hand in violence against his fellow man. Now I don't know why the hell he thought Jerry didn't deserve a good whipping, and I asked him how a no good coward could still go showing his face around town. He said some gibberish about 'being the flesh the evils of the world make themselves known against' and it didn't make a lick of sense because Jerry was just awful, so I raised my pistol at him and said Mister, am I going to shoot you or are you going to stop me? Well he must have thought I was joking because he just laughed, and that didn't scare me one bit so I shot that coward down. From there I went running straight to the Judge who ran the General Store and told him what I did. He gave me a butterscotch candy for being such an imaginative girl. Never did say what he thought of the murder, though.”

JB: “No.... no no no...”

MB: “Around 1980 I finally started to understand what he had said, about being the flesh the evils of the world make themselves known against. I had to regret it first, but I had to get far enough from the person I was back then to do that. Then I understood. That man gave me his life to teach me that lesson.”

JB: “Lessons can be taught by talking too...”

MB: “Try to go your whole life without killing anyone, James.”

JB: “... Okay Grandma.”

MB: “Have a cookie, dearie.”

JB: “Is that a threat?”

MB: “You might have missed the point.”

Woah! Right? I still don't know how to process this, but the phrase “grandfathered in” makes so much sense now. Does she still have a handgun? Do senior citizens just have piles of illegal shit lying around their houses? What's in my Grandmother's attic? Whatever questions remain, the important lessons are clear: Grandma has a gun and she's not afraid to use it. Happy Easter everybody!