Sis and Eddie

A note: The people in the photo above are my grandparents. Their names were not Sis and Eddie. They were Jeanne and Charlie. But Sis and Eddie are connected to them.

Allow me to explain …

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My college roommates and I used to give people secret nicknames. Some were for people we didn’t know. Others were for people we did know and didn’t like. Those nicknames were a little mean.

I guess we were a little mean.

My grandma used to give people nicknames, too. Most of them weren’t very nice either—although some were more covertly mean than others.

When my grandma didn’t know someone’s name, she referred to them as Sis and Eddie. I realize this doesn’t sound like an insult, but it was. Just not to the people being called Sis and Eddie.

She meant it as a dig on her sister-in-law, my great-aunt Sally.

Apparently, Sally used to repeatedly tell my grandma stories about her two friends, Sis and Eddie. But my grandma didn’t know Sis and Eddie. She never met them. No one did. My grandma was convinced Sally made them up because Sally was what people of their generation called a lonely spinster. (Sally didn’t marry until her mid-50s, which was outrageous back then.)

But my grandma didn’t limit her Sis and Eddie mockery to just Sally.

For as long as I can remember, she’d saucily say, “You mean Sis and Eddie?” whenever anyone droned on. It was her way of saying she didn’t know the people they were talking about.

It was also her surreptitious way of saying she was bored with the conversation. When she said it this way, the insult was directed at the speaker, not the story subject(s).

Jeanne Dewey was fresh … And now you know where I get it.

I’ve recently taken to using the expression when someone is going on and on about people I don’t know or don’t care about. I like it. It’s subtle, and it makes me think of my grandma.

I guess the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree … Like grandmother, like granddaughter, as they say.

—LJDT