hashtag no regrets

Photo by Nong V on Unsplash

My grandma used to quote my grandfather, which was a little strange because she hated the prick. In an early lesson in the opposite of love is not hate, she’d call him “that prick,” while showing us old pictures of him looking like Paul Newman in one of his race cars or his flight suit and telling us of his heroism in Vietnam or Korea. This sounds like he was dead, and he has been for 20 years. (This is not my grandpa from this Texas Highways story.) Back then he was very much alive. We just didn’t see him often, probably because he was a fucking prick and they were divorced. But she loved that bastard and would often quote him, “It’s like your grandfather always says, ‘If you need them to like you, they own you.’”