Senility maybe?

My mother is crazy. I really am starting to believe it is true. About a month ago we were on the phone when a little boy laid his bicycle down on her grass to get his ball that he had dropped. She turned into the Psycho Grandma, she ran outside and started yelling at this kid. She wanted to know if his bike had a kickstand and why he wasn't using it. Then she told him that if his ball ever rolled into her yard again, she wanted him to ring the doorbell and IF it was a convenient time she would get his ball for him. If. She was so mean to this kid that I kept thinking about what I would do if someone yelled at one of mine like that. When she finally got back on the phone, I told her that I thought she was WAY out of control and out of touch with the world. I also suggested that she find the time to go apologize to this child and his parents...she was that awful.

Then a couple of weeks ago someone called and woke her up from her nap, they wanted her to make a donation to the Fraternal Order of Police. She was outraged and called the police non emergency number (I hope) and demanded to speak to someone in charge of the fundraiser. When the officer explained that the people making the calls were actually telemarketers, she instead took the opportunity to complain about the way the police officers in her neighborhood drive. She by her own report talked to this guy for almost an hour about the many incidents when she saw a police officer either driving badly or failing to pull over another car that was driving badly. Not that she could provide vehicle numbers...but she just thought they should know.

Today, we were on the phone when she clicked over to take another call, my policy is count to 30, if I'm still waiting, I hang up. She called me back an hour later claiming she had just hung up the phone with someone from Peru who called on behalf of Capital One. Turns out they called to ask her to make a payment today because the last payment she sent in was a dollar shy of what it should have been and her account was in default. As opposed to actually dealing with the problem, she went ape shit on this phone rep about how the state of the economy was all Capital One's fault because they outsource their jobs to Peru. Can you imagine what the person on the other end of the phone was thinking? I mean really?

When my mother does stuff like this and then tells me about it, like it is perfectly rational behavior, it really scares me. Last summer, my sons came home talking about how Grandma opened two boxes of dryer sheets and stuffed as many as she could fit in the box she was buying. I called to remind her what shoplifting was and to ask that she please not involve my children as accomplices. She was dumbfounded about why I was upset. She kept telling me that everyone does that because they never fill the boxes all the way at the factory. Is it really possible that she believes that?

Ugh!