The Worst Grandparents in the World

By Marjorie Bicknell, March 23, 2019 — Back in the 80s when I lived in Harrisburg, my husband and I were watching our almost three-year-old granddaughter. Then he decided to go see a Rocky Horror Stage Show…with his granddaughter! I told him it wasn’t something an under-three-year-old should see, but he said, “She’s too young to understand the innuendo. She’ll be fine.” So he took her to the show, she opened her umbrella and read the newspaper with the rest of the audience, and she had a wonderful time. The only snag was when she asked us why Dr. Frank-n-Furter wore women’s clothing. “Because he wants to,” my husband said. That was good enough for her.

Not too long afterward, I took her to see The Nutcracker. And this theatre was full of White suburban moms and their daughters. So my four year old granddaughter flips through the program and sees an ad for Rocky Horror.
“Rocky Horror! I liked that show,” she said.
All the suburban mothers glared at me, and there was a flurry of daughters swapping seats away from the bad grandma and the tainted granddaughter.

When my granddaughter was ten, we took her to see another Rocky Horror show.
Before the show itself began, the actors went through the tightly packed lobby of the 64-seat theatre, looking for “virgins” (people who never saw the show before) to embarrass onstage. So when they spotted this little girl in the middle of the crowd, they went straight for her and took out their lipstick to write a V for Virgin on her cheek. But she was having none of that. She put up her hand and said, “You don’t need to do that. I saw this show before.”
“Seeing the movie doesn’t count,” the actor scoffed at her.
“Oh no,” she said, “I saw this play before.”
“When could you have seen this before?”
“When I was three,” she said.
And just like at the Nutcracker, all sixty four audience members are staring at me like I’m the worst grandmother in the world. But my granddaughter was just happy to see Rocky Horror again.