Remember the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Movie? Probably one of my most watched movies of all time.

I remember my brothers and cousins and I watching this movie at my grandmother’s house with her. My grandmother and I didn’t exactly get along very well. Maybe I’ll get more into that in a future post, but one thing grandmother did that really annoyed me was that she’d be wrong about something, just flat out wrong, and if you tried to correct her she’d go “Are you calling me a liar?”. There was no reasoning with her once she decided something was true, and as a kid you just kinda drop it and concede unless you wanted to be in trouble.

So we’re watching Power Rangers in the living room and she’s sitting on the couch watching with us. There’s a part in the beginning of the Power Rangers movie where the rangers (and Bulk and Skull) are skydiving and doing all kinds of fancy maneuvers in the air. My peers and I start talking about whether or not we would ever go skydiving. My grandmother, apparently never having seen or heard about skydiving declares that “That’s not real, cain’t nobody fly through the air like that.” I’m about 12 at this point, I know for a fact that skydiving is real, I’ve seen it countless times on television, I know enough about science and gravity and air pressure and etc to be able to explain how and why skydiving is real, and most importantly I actually know two people who have done it, a teacher and one of my dad’s ex girlfriends. So I say to her “People can do that, it’s called skydiving, they’re just freefalling through the a-” she cuts me off “Boy! Can’t nobody fly, it’s just a movie, it’s not real!” to which rebuttal “They’re not flying, it just looks like they’re flying because they experience a drag force equal to-” she cuts me off again “Are you calling me a liar?” “…No, I’m just saying people can-” “Are you calling me a liar?!” “I’m not saying you’re a liar because you believe what you’re saying, but our dad’s old girlfriend Mary went sky-” “Are you calling me a liar?!” FUCK, it’s like talking to a 5yr old, a really petulant, irrational, stubborn 5yr old, except they’re in the body of an old woman who has authority over me. I gave up, obviously, but man oh man would I be angry and resentful afterwards because it would make me so mad to know I’m right (ABOUT OBJECTIVE FACTS) but not have the opportunity to prove it. That happened to me a lot growing up, knowing I was smarter than some adults and they’d get mad at me when I corrected them.

I get along fine with my grandmother now that she’s a tiny woman with no authority, but the part of me that has trouble letting things go kinda wants to actually go skydiving myself so I could rub it in her face. So then I could be the one saying “Are you calling me a liar?!” Yeah, that would be cool. Too bad I’m never jumping outta no goddam plane.

- Stray (facebook / twitter / deviantart)