Grandma Was a Hipster

“Ha, look at the hipster!”

I entered our apartment.  I saw that my son Ted was entertaining a half dozen of his friends with a game of Halo in our living room. 

“What!  I was very nearly the least cool guy out of my entire graduating class.”

“No, dad, Hipsters are definitely not cool, except to themselves.  They go around acting like they don’t care about anything, and every stupid thing they do is ironic.”

“You mean like the Goths we were talking about?”

“Oh no, not like the Goths at all.”

“Then, like the other ones…what were we saying?  Wasn’t it the Emos?”

“No, not like the Emos.”

Luis spoke up, “Hey pops, it’s like this:  All the Hipsters are walking around all the time wearing skinny jeans and a t-shirt, sometimes a flannel shirt, even in the summer, and drinking PBR, and always saying they already saw the movie you’re talking about, even if they didn’t.”

“Oh, it’s the beer, then.” 

I had just come from the store.  I had made a quick stop at a D&W we used to go to when the kids were small.  This particular store sells beer in singles.  It had been a long hot day, and I spied an ice cold twenty-four ounce Pabst Blue Ribbon on the top shelf.

“Yeah, Hipsters drink PBR and pretend it’s better than other kinds.”

“What’s wrong with PBR; it smells like my grandmother!”

I was startled by the explosion of laughter in the living room.  Luis actually rolled over on the floor.  Ted had his head tilted back, laughing at the ceiling.

            “What?  What’s wrong with that?  Whenever I went over to my mom’s mom’s house there was the blue air from the cigarettes, The National Enquirer on the coffee table, “Big Time Wrestling” on the television, and Pabst Blue Ribbon bottles all over in the kitchen.  That’s where they did all their talking when my mom visited.  They’d just sit at the table and talk about everything in the world they didn’t like, and about relatives.  And not all the stories were negative; there were a lot of stories about the old days.”

            My voice trailed off as I made a little mental visit to the “blue air” at my Grandma’s house.  I hadn’t seen her since she moved to Florida to get warm.  In our apartment, everyone was only half listening, as they played their game.  The laughing died down, but they were making side comments to each other and smiling at me.  Luis said, “Well, pops, it looks like your Grandma was a real Hipster.”