Vacation with my grandparents

 I'm sure you would all agree that sometimes spending your summer vacation with your grandmother and grandfather as a kid could be quite boring. Well, not in my case. 

My grandma, as a person who grew up in communist Bulgaria had this ideology that physical labor should be something that is instilled in kids at a young age. It forms discipline and character. That's what she would say at least. For me it was just a patriotic form of excuse to make me plant her potatoes.

 Anyway, the journey would start with the preparation of the luggage. By luggage I mean enough food and clothes for 10 people to survive an year, plus an extra trolley with empty jars, which used to travel back and forth every time with us, to this day I still have no answer why.

 Getting all of the above on the train was pain enough by itself, but the worst part was when we actually arrived and had to walk 2 kilometres to our house(the train station was well outside the village) with an approximate 40kgs of luggage. I, as the youngest member got the carry half of the bags, and complaining wasn't really an option - "You're young and strong, aren't you ashamed that your grandfather is going to carry more than you?". Well, young and strong is a very subjective term at the age of 8. 

Walking past a donkey on the road, I couldn't help myself but express out loud my impression with his male pride, which probably measured as long as my total body height. Grandma wasn't impressed to say the least. My grandfather on the contrary kept on walking like nothing had happened and she slapped him with a bag full of salami and cheese - "Aren't you gonna say something?!". The old man, forced to take part in the conversation slowly sighed and said " I envy the donkey, I used to wake up like that some 30 years ago" 

Grandma once again cursed the day she married him and said that he's a priceless man - couldn't get 50 cents for him on a garage sale.

He just waved her off like every time for the last 40 or so years. 

Finally arriving at our cozy little house in the countryside, there was no fussing about, directly to work. I enquired about the potential possibility of having lunch beforehand, but since it was already late afternoon, my request was denied under the pretext that if I ate now, I wouldn't have dinner later. She had a strange way of convincing me I wasn't hungry even when my stomach would insist otherwise.

She handed me a shovel and issued my combat orders to start digging. She was in such a hurry, like we wouldn't be here for the next month. I went off to the other end of the garden and started digging  out some weeds. 

With no supervision of the governing authority, I made a nice clean patch, ready to be planted. Or at least that's what I thought. Turned out though that I actually dug out the flower garden. How was I suppose to know, at 8 years old it was all grass to me(pretty much still is to this day). Never the less, I was punished with starting all over again, this time in the correct spot. 

By the time I finished it was already dark, and I had pretty much forgotten that I was hungry. Grandma popped out the window and yelled - "Well are you coming in or what? You haven't eaten all day!". Well jeez grandma, you don't say? 

We sat down the three of us, a nice family dinner. I used to love those quite evenings on the terrace, the fresh air, the crickets, nothing to be heard for miles away. Just as we were finishing our meals, grandpa dropped a powerbomb fart that lasted for about 6 seconds, I laughed so hard that I choked with the food in my mouth and grandma slapped me on the back so hard that I wished I hadn't choked. "You see what you did, he was gonna die because of you!" she blamed him. My grandfather in his typical aristocratic wisdom replied "Good people don't keep bad things in them". 

Yours truly,

S