A high school acquaintance recently Facebook messaged me and asked me what the address of my childhood home had been. I told her it didn’t have one. It had a route number. Route 3, Murray Lane.

When I was young, maybe 8 or 9 years old, I would spend parts of my summer staying with my grandma and my uncle who lived with her. My uncle’s first wife had left him some years earlier and he had moved back in with his mother in his 30s.

I am what is commonly referred to as an Oops Baby. My brothers are all at least a decade older than me and I was told that my mother initially thought I was food poisoning. I still have that effect on some people.

I'm guessing that when most people think of the word "grandma," they tend to think of plump, little old ladies who bake cookies and bring you presents when it's not your birthday or Christmas and generally more or less spoil you rotten.