My grandmother was an English teacher for many years before retiring. She was also an avid reader. With that, she had a habit of writing on everything with written text. Today, as I look at the Bible that used to rest in the center of the coffee table in the living room of their home, or sat propped open on her lap every Wednesday and Sunday, I am reminded of a funny story.

When my grandparents moved to Colorado, they had one bedroom in their home they designated as the “library”. They had many books that they collected and read over the years, from romance novels to books about the War that my grandpa and our relatives had fought in.

It never failed that nearly every time I visited them, they would try sending books home with me. My grandpa would say he’d read every one and that he was tired of looking at them. I would jokingly tell him to shut the door on the room. They also went to the library on occasion, but as my grandmother’s dementia worsened, my grandpa was nervous that she would take her habit of writing in books, out on the books that didn’t belong to them, so they stopped going.

Another habit that my grandmother had was grading the books as she read them, and of course, correcting any grammar or punctuation along the way. Often, if I opened up one of the books from their home library I would find a letter grade, A, B, or C. Sometimes she’d even go as far as to write a plus or minus after the grade they’d been given, just as a little extra bias. It was also not unusual to find both of their initials on the back cover of the books, to serve as a reminder that they’d read them. This served well to my grandmother’s failing memory, because she would open up the books, see her initials and know immediately that she had already read that book.

One day while I was over visiting, my grandmother asked that I take her to the library. My grandpa, who was very frugal and never believed in wasting money or time, wasn’t in favor. He said, “Honey, you have all kinds of books back there in the library, what do you need to go to town for?” She adamantly went into their home library, grabbed a few books and quickly opened to the back page. She pointed to her initials in an attempt to prove to him that she’d already read the books and, failing memory or not, she wasn’t about to read them again. She then quickly turned to the front of one of the books and said puzzled, “Well, I’ll swan” (my grandmother often used this term so as not to swear). “I gave her [the Author] a B on this one, why would I do that?! She is one of my favorites.” She then grabbed another book from the same author, flipped through it and saw that she had given this book an A. She then laid them side by side on the coffee table, face down and said, “Now I remember why I gave her a B on that one. You see how she grew her hair out?”, pointing to the back cover where the Author’s picture was displayed, “I don’t like her with long hair, if she would have left it short like she has it in this book, I would have given her an A.”