Affigan

When I was a kid, my family used “afghan” to refer to any knitted blanket on a couch. I’m not sure whether that’s the strict definition of the word, but that’s what it meant to us.

My paternal grandmother said it with three syllables, affigan (rhymes with the last name of comedian Jim Gaffigan). That was almost exactly how she said “African,” too, as in the potted Affican violets she liked.

She said almost everything wrong, which made her highly quotable. Her legacy is therefore secure as long as my sisters and I are living.

Or, as my then-9-year-old nephew put it during my last visit home for Christmas, “Y’all talk about your grandma all the time.”

His tone did not suggest an interest in keeping the tradition going.

Course, he never met his great-grandmother, who died before he was born, and that probably makes a difference. I couldn’t tell you a thing uttered by any of my own great-grandparents, and I met a couple of them.

The closest I can get to a quote is from the time when I must have been around 4 years old, and my mother’s visiting grandfather, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, told my older sister and me that his hearing aid played music. Then he must have made it beep or something, though I didn’t hear a sound. But I remember feeling the pressure to pretend I understood—and was amused by—what was going on.

Confusion while fake-laughing has evidently been part of my brand from the beginning.

As for my genuine delight in people who talk funny, I don’t know if that started with my grandma but it remains strong to this day.

Recently I was taking a walk on the trail near my apartment building when I encountered a tall young man carrying a rectangular cardboard sign with “Hands off Canada” scrawled on it in red ink. I didn’t see any other protesters, if that’s what he was, nearby.  

He told me he liked my shirt, a black tee that was given to me by the tourism office in St. Petersburg, Florida, when I was there to do a travel story a few years ago. On the front of the shirt, four cities are listed in white letters. Here is the text in full:

Paris
London
Tokyo
St. Pete

I don’t understand what this garment is getting at. Is it trying to say, perhaps facetiously, that St. Petersburg, Florida, is of the same caliber as those other places?

Fine, but isn’t that argument muddied by there being another, larger, more famous St. Petersburg that has a more legitimate claim to rivaling Paris and London et al.? Is that the joke? Am I the only one confused and fake-laughing?

In any case, the guy with the sign told me that St. Petersburg is his favorite city.

“The one in Russia or the one in Florida?” I asked.

“The one in Wussia,” he said, for he couldn’t say his Rs right.

I explained that I got the shirt in Florida.

“Do you like my sign?” he said, out of absolutely nowhere. “Fuck Twump; do you agwee?”

By this point I was madly in love with him. Honestly, I would have considered leaving my spouse to take up the cause of defending Canada or St. Petersburg or any other chilly destination. My one condition would be that my new paramour would have to deliver the news to my husband: “Fwank, Zac and I must wun away to Wussia. Or maybe Towonto.”

“I strongly agree!” I said to his question about Twump. But then he moved onto some other passerby and that was it for us.

I think maybe he was a little soft in the noggin, but he was also the man of my dweams.