Occasionally people, usually friends lacking fear or common sense, ask me to write something for them.  Sometimes they are fans of my work, other times they just know that I try to make my way at least partially via the written word and think something along the lines of “Well, how bad can he be?”  

In this case, a friend recently lost her grandmother, someone who for all intents and purposes raised her.  This friend decided she wanted to hear memories people had of her grandmother, and if we didn’t know her, to make up some.  That’s where I came in.  I decided Mom-Mom Giese was larger than life, half Paul Bunyan, half Paul Revere.  So here, I present to my friend, your grandmother’s story.  I hope you like it, or at least don’t hate it, or at least don’t hate me after reading.  

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The Ballad of Mom-Mom Giese

 

Everyone, in some way, shape, or form, has a grandmother.  You may have never met her, you may barely remember her, but I guarantee you, as long as you are breathing, you indeed had a grandmother.  

 

All grandmothers are different.  Some made cookies or babysat, some made babies and sat on cookies.  My own grandmother was notorious for her flatulence, her distribution of food poisoning at Thanksgiving, and her treatment of her husband via the flagrant use of her middle finger or stabbing motions toward his back.  But I’m not here to tell you the story of my grandmother; this is a tale more fantastic.  This is the story of Mom-Mom Giese, someone whom you’ve never likely met, but would sure love to have backing you up in a dark alley.  My one encounter changed my life, but that comes later in the story.  

 

Mom-Mom Giese was born to this world the last of seventeen brothers and sisters.  With sixteen rivals for love, attention and most importantly food, Mom-Mom learned to fend for herself early on.  Knowing that she would be entering the world with so many siblings, she performed a tube tie on her mother as she was leaving the womb, somehow having learned to make a perfect sea shank knot during her nine months of development.  She weaned herself at seven months, moving directly from the breast to cured meat of a grizzly bear cub she stalked and killed with her bare hands.  Not only did this provide her sustenance, but it also assured her sixteen brothers and sisters that Giese would not be taking even trivial amounts of shit.

 

School was uneventful for Mom-Mom, aside from numerous suspensions for making bullies cry while returning nerds their lunch money.  The opportunity for college arrived, with Mom-Mom ready to accept full scholarships to both Yale and Harvard, double majoring in both law and medicine, but something else arrived which changed her course: the Nazis.

 

World War II erupted across Europe, and Giese was content to do her part as a riveter, until that fateful day when Pearl Harbor was attacked.  She enlisted in the Army but was denied combat operations due to her fairer sex.  She was quickly scheduled to be drummed out of the Army for kicking the ass of the recruiter who denied her combat operations due to her fairer sex, but as she left her Article 13 hearing, she was recruited for an Army Black Ops Super Soldier program, one that was plagiarized by Stan Lee as the basis for Captain America.  

 

It was in Germany that she distinguished herself as not only a competent soldier and spy, but as a scientist.  Looking for a contingency plan to back up the atomic bomb, she developed the Giese Thunderclap Wave Motion Gaiden, a weapon which was comprised of loading her into a bomb, dropping it on the target city, with her clapping her hands as hard as she could when she reached the target altitude.  Initially the plan was to train numerous Mom-Mokazi troops to man the bombs on their suicide missions, however it was quickly learned that recruits couldn’t effectively learn the technique without inflicting serious injury upon themselves.  The program was cancelled when a new recruit literally blew her own arms off attempting the maneuver.  Giese stood ready to do her duty as the sole bomb occupant, but was ordered to stand down when computer simulations of the time indicated a successful detonation would vaporize Japan, the most Pacific islands, and a large percentage of China, as well as causing the instant extinction of the Duck-Billed Platypus globally.  Giese was more concerned about the Platypus.

 

The war over, Giese turned her attentions to her newfound love of science.  Some of the inventions she created but are often attributed to other scientists include:

 

The Polio Vaccine

 

Velcro

 

K-Y (originally designed as a waterless lubricant for indoor Slip and Slides)

 

Pop-Tarts

 

Hot Sauce

 

The Nintendo Entertainment System

 

The Burrito Bowl

 

Pro Wrestling

 

Wi-Fi

 

Bottled Water

 

Years passed and Mom-Mom Giese finally settled down in Maryland, having declined the government’s offer of abolishing the Constitution and establishing her as Eternal High Empress of America, but staying close enough to advise in policy and culinary matters.  She advised not going to war in Vietnam, but assisted when called upon, concentrating her efforts on rescue rather than combat.  It was in Da Nang that she met the love of her life, Pop Pop.  

 

His unit all but obliterated, Private First Class Pop-Pop called in an air strike on his own position in an attempt to neutralize the Viet Cong soldiers surrounding his position, closing in on the documents he was sworn to protect.  Instead, the Army sent in Mom-Mom Giese to extract him and the documents.  Unwilling to put more people in danger, Giese opted not to be airlifted to the combat zone, but rather hitched a ride on a U-2 spy plane and jumped out without a parachute into battle.  The impact of her landing caused a concussive blast which knocked the surrounding forces to the ground, though had the unintended consequences of bursting PFC Pop-Pop’s ear drums, leading to his early hearing loss in the future.

 

The Private had been gravely wounded, having taken three rifle rounds to the torso.  Fearful that the young private would soon lose his life and having watched numerous hours of Wild Kingdom, Giese removed the three bullets from the dying private by sucking on the gaping wounds like one would remove snake venom, even spitting one out at incredible velocity directly into the eye of an approaching enemy soldier, killing him instantly.  

 

Hoisting the private and documents on her back, she began tunnelling into the ground using her bare hands, digging her way back from behind enemy lines 175 miles in less than thirty minutes; a technique she learned from watching Bugs Bunny.  For Mom-Mom, it was another day at the office, but for Pop-Pop it was love at first sight.  He was absolutely smitten with the woman who had saved his life, and spent the next three years trying to woo her, both away from the service and the attention of other potential suitors.  Eventually she accepted his numerous marriage proposals, left public service, and settled down, but of course her story doesn’t end here.  

 

She spend almost the entirety of the ’70s wearing earplugs and learned sign language in hopes of never having to hear a single note of disco music.  She had a similar distaste for all rap aside from the Sugar Hill Gang, though was known for her fondness for Electro.  She became a mother, and as time went on, a grandmother and great grandmother.  It was in her capacities as grandmother that I had my one and only harrowing encounter with her.

 

Time had moved on, and eventually Pop-Pop moved from this world unto the next.  Rumor has it, when the Angels came to take him home she popped two of them with a Taser, blackened one’s eye, and ripped off a fourth’s halo, which she mounted above her front door to warn away any supernatural bastards who would try to take someone away from her again.  They only escaped her home with Pop-Pop’s eternal soul after calling in for reinforcements twice, and finally getting lucky with a supernatural sucker punch.  

 

As a friend of her grand daughter, I was called upon to attend Mom-Mom’s newly departed husband’s viewing; my one and only encounter with her.  My friend had recently had her heart broken by a man, and having recent experiences with a broken heart led Mom-Mom’s concern for her granddaughter to gaze her eyes on me, in fear that I had been the one inflicting pain on her loved one.  As I walked outside to catch a breath of fresh air, I stooped down to pick up the wallet I dropped.  Standing back up, inches away from my face stood Mom-Mom Giese, appearing before me with all of the deadly grace of a puma.  She asked if I had been the one to hurt her granddaughter, but before I could stammer out a response, her right hand flicked out, drawing with lighting speed what looked like a butterfly knife sharp enough to shave layers of steel.  Backing away, she lunged forward, gripping my throat with an iron grip, lifting all 250 pounds of me six inches off the ground before executing a perfect choke slam, knocking the wind from my body and sending stars in my eyes.  The tip of the knife gently touched my chin with just enough pressure to cause a small welt of blood to raise.  She put her lips to my ear and spoke, words that will never leave my mind.

 

“If I find out you were the one to hurt my granddaughter, I will geld you and feed the remains to your mother!  And if you aren’t the man who hurt her, pray that you never do.”  

 

I closed my eyes in disbelief and fear, and in a flash she vanished in a cloud of fire and brimstone.  I picked myself up off the ground, brushed myself off, wiped away the blood from my chin, and went in to excuse myself from the proceedings, fighting every urge I had to run in terror instead.  As I walked back in the funeral home, there she sat, cane next to her, no sign of exertion on her person.  She sat in her high backed chair, accepting condolences with a sad smile, no one the wiser.  I tried my best not to make eye contact, but once I found my eyes upon hers, and in that flash I could have sworn she showed me her teeth in a threatening smile.  I don’t know if she ever caught up with the man who hurt her granddaughter, but I pity the man if she did.

 

I learned of her passing many years later.  The stories say that the Angel of Death himself came to visit her as stories of Giese made other angels wet their robes.  Brave as he was, he still came packing a billy club and pepper spray.  Even in her weakened state, she still managed to kick that angel square in the nuts three times before finally being subdued by Death’s posse of 20.  As she was greeted at the gates of Heaven, she was presented not with the customary harp, but with a 1967 Fender Stratocaster and a glass of Dom Perignon ’45, and Jesus hopped down from his throne to buy her a beer.

 

Other facts about Mom-Mom Giese:

 

She was responsible for the breakup of Van Halen

 

She issued a cease and desist order to Jean Claude Van Damme who had tried to change his name to Giese, on the grounds that sharing her name with him would make her look like a pussy.

 

She singlehandedly saved the crew of Apollo 13 by taking a deep breath, jumping into lunar orbit, shot putting the space ship back to Earth, and finally returning home by exhaling really hard.  

 

She translated Shakespeare from the original Klingon into English.

 

Tribal villagers in South America one mistook Giese as their deity.  She is still worshiped in some tribal cultures.

 

Hitler decided upon killing himself after learning that Giese and her Howling Commandos were nearing the bunker.  His final words: “Oh shit, here she comes!”

 

She could slow cook the world’s most tender pulled pork in 15 minutes.

 

Among the pallbearers at her funeral were action stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris.  Chuck Norris wept.