I am drunk. Not an odd thing when one knows that I am in Scotland. Scots find drinking to be a olympic sport so why should i deny myself a little bit of cultural competition? Plus when your hanging out in a haunted 500 year old house you definitely want to ply yourself with enough alcohol so when you see the ghost of a beheaded priest walking down the stairs with a bible your reaction will be less "HOLY SHIT" and more "wow, that must have been one hell of a sermon"....
The more and more I visit Scotland the more paradoxical the culture becomes to me. I am no longer blinded by awe or the newness of it. Instead now when i see several drunken bastards puking in the street I am not shocked, instead I look at the cans of Tennents in their hands and think you daft bastards no wonder why your all puking. The stuff is in competition with Natty Ice and Ankor with being the most chemically induced beer this planet has so far created.
So the paradoxes have started piling up like a gang bang train. The other day I was taken to go see my boyfriends grandma. She was a nice old lady with kind eyes, an unbelievably brilliant thick Scottish twang and can get me drunk quicker than a roofy at an UCSB frat part
What I've realized is that Scotland is no place for the grannies that are the faint of heart type. The grandmas giving you hot coco and a slice of key lime pie dont exist here.
My boy friend's grandmother is no alcoholic by any means but she is just very prepared. Her alcohol cupboard would rival that of Gary Busey's personal bar. The gin and tonics she forces us to drink are explosive and the single malt whiskeys' are not just wee drams but fucking imperial pints. The scotches are are so strong they easily peel your nipples off and could grow you a full size man-package!
You don't get cookies here, no you just get a hangover. Most American grandma's turn their grandchildren into diabetics but here they seem to turn theirs into alcoholics. My granny used to offer us stale cereal and fermented orange juice, not such a good deal...however, my sister did recently inform me that the "tang" my grandmother used to give us was actually outdated orange juice with an abundant amount of champagne to disguise the OJ's fermentation or maybe she was trying to sedate us? No wonder i get a long with my boyfriends grandma so well! I am used to my drinks being heavily spiked by old ladies....
Not only is my partner's grandma a brilliant bartender in disguise but she is also very observant and calls it like she sees it. At one point the conversation started dancing around religion and gently pushed towards Catholic priests. Now in other company I would have steered clear of that topic but seeing as she is an elder Catholic woman I thought we were safe enough.... I was most definitely wrong. Because before I knew it the word poof and priest were uttered in the same sentence. I proceeded to spit out the contents of my (mostly) gin and (very little) tonic and stared in shock. That didnt stop her.
"Oh yeah, Most priests are total poofs." I thought maybe my definition of the word poof had altered in the last minute some how...maybe it meant utterly devote?
"They are all homos"...Apparently not.
Now she is not racist or a homophobe. She's a grandma which means she loves everyone! She is just an elderly lady with a keen eye and an unPC vocabulary.
According to Granny though, her priest was most definitely straight and also a saint. "He comes over and drinks with my son and I.".... I could not let this fantastic contradiction pass me by so I said "he drinks with you?" and her response is "Och aye! He loves his drink."
And so my adventures in Scotland thus far have been paradoxically fabulous. Loaded with drink pushing grandmas, puking strangers, and colloquialisms. Oh how I have missed this unPC world! I hope that one day i will grow into being such a granny where nothing is too taboo to touch.
