There’s no manual to life, but I am lucky enough to have the next best thing: my grandma. You’d be wrong in picturing my grandma as a sweet, cookie-baking woman. My grandma, petite with black eyes and (now) cotton-colored hair taught me to play poker and shoot dice when I was just eight. She has fought off muggings with her booming voice. She’s lived in Chicago her entire life, was born the year the stockmarket crashed and was raised in the “back of the yards” as they say there, referring to the neighborhood behind the stockyards.

She is sharp, witty, and sage. I don’t take advice well, but hers is always welcome.

Stuff my Grandma Says

“Convince yourself you like whatever it is”

This is something she said to me recently, when I told her about my new gig as a contract copywriter for a major cellphone company (yay! to jobs).

“If you don’t like it, just convince yourself you like it.” My grandma has taught me this again and again. If we didn’t want to eat something, she’d scoop it up in her fork and talk about how great it was until she had us almost convinced she was eating Skittles instead of canned green beans.

When she talks about her own childhood, it’s never negative, never whiny, although I am positive she’s been through some of the hardest times the country has ever seen. She prefers to reminisce about how the entire family would push the tables aside on Thanksgiving and dance the jitterbug.

Why am I not dancing the jitterbug right now? Oh, because I am on the internet. 

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