Manafonistas

When I was a young girl our family sometimes visited my mother´s mother. It was just few miles away, to me it was countryside for they had a garden and even chickens there. My grandmother lived with her brother and his family in a house, she in an appartment upstairs which she shared with another old woman always dressed in black. Kind of flatshare, but not at all hippie-like. She was my only grandmother that time, hard of hearing, so I automatically talked louder to someone older than say seventy, even now. She had lost nearly everything she once loved, at a very early age, and she never talked about it. These visits always bored me. I was the only child in the world, as my brother talked to the adults and seemed to be like one of them. All my books I had already read. At that time I did not know about the public library. My mother was a children´s nurse so she was afraid of bacteria and thus not enthusiastic about library books at home. In my despair I took the current edition of the women´s magazine my grandmother bought every thursday, year for year. As I never was interested in king´s or queen´s affairs or their babies and the fashion and make-up advices, there were only a few pages left I regulary read. This was the story of the week. Main character mostly was a young or middle aged woman unhappy with her love life. And – I could hardy believe it – there was always a happy end, at least in a way. I lied on a sofa in a separate room (my brother´s godmother´s bedroom) and I thougt when this was a good short story everybody could write one. But I did not trust them. And would a calculable life not be boring?