On campus, a very young man asked if Klara is my daughter or granddaughter. The funny thing is that it’s a perfectly reasonable question: I’m an old, old mother. And I know exactly who to blame. Bananas.
When N heard that our little nephew was given banana puree as his first solid food, he said that had he been given bananas back in 1976, he’d grow up to be a much happier person and would have met me 15 years sooner. But we weren’t raised on this kind of sweetness and our lives turned out way too bitter for way too long.
P.S. Do I need to explain that bananas are a metaphor and it’s not actual bananas I’m talking about?
Clarissa's Blog 
Oh come now. You are not old enough to be anyone’s grandmother. Even my grandmother wasn’t a grandmother at your age and she had my mother when she was 19. It’s technically possible but then we get into questionable territory.
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Hey, if I had Klara at twenty and she had another Klara at 20, as well, it could definitely happen.
Now, if I were to be somebody’s greatgrandma, that would be icky.
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Is it better being asked these questions than being mistaken for a student?
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It’s better than being asked out by a student, that’s for sure. I’m ready to be mistaken for a retiree to avoid that kind of thing. 😎
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And here I thought you were going to blame that great Woody Allen movie!
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Years ago, famous country singer Loretta Lynn (“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’,” and many other hits) became a grandmother at age twenty-eight. By those standards, you’d be about two years away from having your first great-grandchild!
Lynn later recorded a controversial hit song called “The Pill,” about how to avoid such situations.
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“became a grandmother at age twenty-eight”
I love Loretta Lynn, but I think most sources now would push that back a few years (the general consensus is that she… exaggerated how young she was when she got married). But still becoming a grandmother around 30 is on the extreme side for the US.
“a controversial hit song called “The Pill,” about how to avoid such situations.”
At the time I thought the lyrics were a little old – there was a reference to hot pants (dead in the water as fashion in 1975). It turns out it was recorded around 1972 and the label sat on it a few years before agreeing to release it.
And Lynn caused more controversy with her songs than any other country singer before or since. Every year or two she’d have a record that some country stations wouldn’t play.
Among my favorites are “Wings upon your horns” (a very Freudian description of the loss or virginity) and “When the tingle becomes a chill” (about the trauma of losing sexual desire).
By current standards her most controversial song would be one that didn’t raise eyebrows at the time “Your squaw is on the warpath” (like many Americans she had exagerrated romantic notions of having Amerindian ancestory).
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