The Truth About Luck: What I Learned on My Road Trip with Grandma Read Online Free PDF Page A

could take her on a trip.”
    That was it. That’s where the whole trip thing started. One sip into our second beer.
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    â€œSeriously, you guys should go on a trip.”
    â€œJimmy, I’m not even sure I can realistically afford that plastic tablecloth. How’s a trip going to work?”
    â€œWell, you can ask her to pay for it.”
    It was morally uplifting to me that I’d never considered this before — convincing the receiver of my gift to pay for it. It somehow seemed — oh, I don’t know — appalling.
    â€œSo you think for my gift to my ninety-two-year-old grandma I should offer to take her on a trip. And then tell her she’s paying for it?”
    â€œExactly. The gift isn’t about the money but, like I said, the time.”
    â€œWhat kind of trip are we talking about?”
    â€œWell, I don’t know. You could go somewhere warm.”
    â€œLike a spring break–type thing?”
    He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Not exactly.”
    â€œDoes Grandma even like warm?” I asked. Personally I’d always hated heat, sun, and beach vacations. With my fair skin and bony thighs that can’t fill in the tightest spandex, I’m as physically suited to those trips as I am to giving birth.
    â€œI know what you’re thinking, it’s you who hates the idea of going somewhere warm.”
    â€œHow dare you! Don’t assume.”
    â€œYou could fly out to Winnipeg. She could show you around where she grew up.”
    â€œWinnipeg? You think she’d like that?” Whoa, Winnipeg! Hold on, sir! I didn’t want beach, but I didn’t want the complete lack of any warmth, either. Plus I haven’t taken a trip anywhere in years, and now I’ve ended up in a city with one of the country’s highest crime rates and the nation’s largest mosquitoes? Really?
    â€œShe’d probably love it. It’s you who’d hate it.”
    â€œBut what about flying? Do you think she wants to go in an airplane?” I’ve never loved flying.
    Jimmy rolled his eyes.
    â€œSeriously, you think it would be okay, just the two of us?”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI don’t know, I’ve never spent any time with Grandma alone before. What would we do every day? She’d be forced out of her routine.”
    â€œIt’s not Grandma and her routine I’d be worried about.”
    â€œI know, I know. But —”
    â€œStop worrying for three seconds of your life. Get out of your own head.”
    â€œBut, I mean, I’m used to being alone all the time. And she’ll be ninety-two!”
    â€œYeah, so? You’re, what, twenty-eight. It would be great. You could use the company for a few days.”
    â€œWell, do ninety-two-year-olds go on trips?”
    â€œShe’s old, she’s not unportable.”
    â€œBut she’s slowing down a bit.”
    â€œShe’s fine. She’s great.”
    â€œI know, I know.”
    I was thinking about the previous August. Grandma had been at a nearby mall, getting her hair done at a generic salon. She still liked to get it done every week. It was a muggy day and she’d been sitting in the stylist’s chair for three-quarters of an hour. The stylist had been chatting the entire time, asking her questions and saying she couldn’t believe Grandma was in her nineties. She wished her own mother was looking as good. She kept talking about her hair too, how beautifully white it was, just like snow. I’m sure Grandma was bashfully shrugging off these compliments the way I’ve seen her do countless times.
    After she paid, she walked out into the mall. She was feeling good and, as always, liked her new cut. Several steps outside the stylists’ she fell, inexplicably. When a little old lady with a head of freshly coiffed white hair falls in plain view, dropping her purse, a commotion will ensue. And