Grandparent Jail

Ok I had this in my list of blog posts as “Grandparent Joint Social Media” because a grandparent joint social media account (shoutout gmapapagregoroff) liked one of our Instagram posts yesterday but that list is a spreadsheet and that spreadsheet cut off the words so it looked, at a glance, like it said “Grandparent Jail” and now I can’t stop thinking about Grandparent Jail. Is it just a nursing home? Is it a real jail?

On Tuesday, I rode the shuttle from the terminal at O’Hare to the rental car facility (Unclear why this shuttle exists as the train evidently goes to the rental car facility? And the train is way more comfortable? Maybe I missed something.) alongside two women who I’m going to stereotype and call grandmas. But not, like, the fun kind of grandmas. These were the grandmas who were complaining, and who were absolutely loving doing that complaining. I *think* the root of their complaint was that the shuttle driver was letting other people onto the shuttle when there was space remaining on that shuttle, but whatever the source, it boiled down to, “It almost makes you just not want to fly anymore,” which was a level of complaint escalation I could neither fathom nor expect. They never cease to amaze you, humans.

I wonder if Grandparent Jail, at least on the women’s side, would actually be pretty nice. If it would be nice enough that there would be nothing to complain about, but simultaneously not that enjoyable. Like, it’d have Bravo, but only the blandest of movies. You’d have to ride a lot of shuttles every day, but the shuttles would be a little spacious.

I’m also now realizing that I was definitely thinking more of Grandparent Hell than Grandparent Jail in that last paragraph. Probably not great to conflate the two. Not sure we want Jail to be Hell. Not sure that’s accomplishing much. We want to rehabilitate the grandparents at Grandparent Jail. No shuttles. Unless they say thank you.