Precerpt from Grandma Ninja's Training Diary: The Piano Bench Incident
There’s a certain kind of man who arrives already convinced he knows everything about me. He takes one look — 4'11", "little old lady" — and his brain immediately files me under fragile . I can practically hear the click. So, when the piano movers came a while back, one of them carried the bench filled to the brim with sheet music and books out of the truck like it was a sacred artifact. He set it down with a grunt, wiped his hands, and gave me the kind of warning men reserve for toddlers and porcelain dolls. “Don’t try to lift that,” he said. “It’s really heavy.” He meant well. He truly did. But he also had no idea who he was talking to. Because the moment they disappeared inside with the piano — up 9 stairs, across the landing, up the next set of 8 stairs — the bench started whispering to me. Not loudly. Just a little psst from the corner. A dare. A challenge. A reminder of who I actually am. So, of course, I picked it up. And, of course, it wasn’t impossibly he...