(no subject)

[slammerkinbabe]

Sometimes life is sad and depressing and you really don't feel at looking at the specific real-life things that are making you sad and depressed. So you search for random Julie Andrews videos on YouTube instead. And sometimes, if you are lucky, you find this:

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Julie Andrews yodeling with the real-life Maria von Trapp.

Interestingly, I don't think I've ever told the story on LJ of how my grandmother met Maria von Trapp. It's a funny story because Gramma's sort of cagey on the details; she gets that way when you try to draw a story out of her, as opposed to what happens when she's just sort of letting her mind wander in and out of a conversation people are having, in which case she's liable to interrupt at any moment as a story strikes her and tell you about the time she tried to rescue a stranded snapping turtle for a pet when she was a small child and it bit her and all but sucked her finger off, or whatever.* My grandmother is a hell of a storyteller, but only on her terms, and for some reason, I have never been around when it has occurred to her to tell the story of her meeting Maria von Trapp. I heard it secondhand and begged her for the details, but she just smiled and shook her head and said "Oh, yes. I did meet her. What do you want to know?"

And since I do not know exactly what it is I want to know, because if I knew what I wanted to know then I'd already know it and I wouldn't have to ask, I have never been able to get good details. All I have been able to learn is the following:

1. My grandmother met Maria von Trapp when she (Gramma) had a friend visiting at the cottage, a priest who knew the von Trapps and was traveling with them; and
2. A relative of mine, who was a baby at the time and who shall remain nameless, peed on Maria von Trapp while being held in her lap.

Frankly I think my unnamed relative has the best role in this story, but I have never spoken to her about it. "So you peed on Maria von Trapp!" has never felt like a great conversational opener, I don't know why.

Next time I will ask Gramma if she asked Maria von Trapp to yodel with her. And if not: why?

Someday I will figure out the right questions to ask her, and I will get this whole story. I will just have to be as cagey as she. Hm.

*If you couldn't tell: this is perhaps the single thing I love most about my grandmother.

Comments

[chavvah.livejournal.com]

My mum talked with Art Garfunkel at a party one time. Which is not exactly the same, but you know. She is equally cagey about it. I get the sense that he tried to pick her up and she wasn't into it, although she is far too modest to ever say as much.