DRAMA-mine

I'll start by writing the only amusing thing that has been said about this awful family situation since it began (yesterday at noon), courtesy of my dad. Daddy said, "I've taken my DRAMA-mine today." The joke is that both my dad and I regularly rely on the use of dramamine, a medicine to prevent motion sickness. Daddy has had to have a supply due to riding in tanks and then on airplanes. I have to have the stuff anytime I ride in the backseat of a car or bicycle or go-cart or anything that moves. The aforementioned "drama" has been on a magnificent scale.

So here's the situation. Let's start with a few facts. My grandmother (80 years of age) owns her house (which has upstairs apartment that she rents out) and she owns the two houses behind her. My uncle Mike lives in one of the houses. Mike's son (Michael, age 35) lives in the other house. Mike's other son (Mark, age 29) lives with my granny. Michael and Mark are half Hawaiian just for visual purposes (the rest of us are honkey white.) Mark is a pathetic drug addict. He has ruined my grandmother financially. She doesn't seem to able to pronounce the simple English word "NO" when speaking to Mark. It seems to omit itself from her vocabulary in Mark's presence. All the dirty laundry to be aired is this: granny called me yesterday asking for $200 to pay her car insurance. I told her there were two conditions to borrowing money from me. First of all she would have to relinquish any and all control of her accounts to me because obviously there is a problem. Second of all, I would NOT give any cash to her, she and I would travel to the establishment monies are owed to and pay them personally. Granny agreed to all of this. So I told her to bring her checkbook, bills, and credit cards to ME. She brought them and the extremely LARGE can of worms that had been opened. Mark has succeeded in brainwashing my granny into draining not only her bank account fully and thereby bouncing somewhere around eightyhundred-friggin-grazzillion checks (23 actually) but Mark has also convinced her to drain her Ladies CHURCH bank account too. Hello, that's FRAUD. Uh-huh F.R.A.U.D. If I were smart I'd dream up some clever acronym that describes how STUPID I think both my granny and Mark are. Not only has granny done all this but she has also written 5 checks to her employer, all of which have bounced. Not exactly a way to ensure your future employment. Granny works as a receptionist for a nursing home (at least for now). Granny and I traveled to the bank and my eyes proceeded to pop out of my head and roll around on the ground as the nice Bank Man Scott explained to me that 23 checks had bounced and about 30 bad check fees had been charged to Granny's account. All the fees were a result of multiple attempts by vendors to re-run the checks through in an attempt to retrieve their funds. The bad check fees (insufficient fund fees to all you smarties out there) totaled up to be almost $1,000. YES YOU HEARD ME. (read me...whatever). Thankfully, out of the wonderful kindness of their hearts for a senile 80 year old who had been manipulated by a drug addicted piece-o-crap Hawaiian, the nice Bank People mercifully REFUNED ALL THE INSUFFICIENT FUND FEES. I almost fell out-o-me chair. It was an unexpected kindness that my granny ALMOST doesn't deserve. So after I recovered from my shock I explained that we would leave the money that would now be in the account IN THE ACCOUNT in case any other checks came through. Because obviously, without me having to mention it, absolutely NO records had been kept regarding what checks might still hit the bank. Honestly people, this is the most ridiculously horrible financial situation I have EVER come across in all my days. I am disgusted with my cousin for manipulating my granny this way. I am also disappointed in my granny for turning 80 and becoming retarded. Seriously, granny is a smart woman who still drives and works a part-time job. She is not senile, just naive. This situation has put a curl in my very straight hair. And it's only the tip of the ICEBERG.