If you come from a Russian family you may already know that the TRUE head of the family is your grandmother. Who always has the most absurd demands possible as well as the most un-eloquent way of expressing them possible. The following is an example of such demands.

Dating: I’m currently 22 years old. By soviet standards this would make me an old maid within the next 10 months. My grandmother has no hesitations about expressing her displeasure with my lack of a boyfriend/fiance/husband. During every single phone conversation she tells me that I MUST find a “nice Russian boy – better if he’s Jewish” from a “good family”. Now what this means is “You must find someone I approve of, which means he has to have a lot of money, and someone in his immediate family must be a doctor. If he’s not Russian then he’s sub-human, oh and he must be willing to have babies with you right away.”

School: I’m the first person in my family for like a gazillion generations that hasn’t gone into medicine. I chose the business world where your grades matter very little and your experience/who you know matters very much. My grandmother doesn’t understand this what-so-ever so therefore my GPA of 3.84 is just BEYOND low by her standards. You see, in Soviet times the students were split up into 2 categories: “Dvoyishneetsi” and “Atleechniki” which basically translates into people who get grades of around 2.0 and the exceptional students. Being that I didn’t earn a 4.0… CLEARLY I’m a “Dvoyishneetsa”. This implies that someone should be beating my hand with a ruler.

Career: Doctors generally start earning large sums of money pretty quickly once they’re done with schooling. It doesn’t work this way in business. My grandmother doesn’t understand this concept of “working your way up” – because frankly it’s not like a nurse can work her way to becoming a doctor… so it’s a completely different game. So she CONSTANTLY yells at me about how I chose a terrible field because I didn’t graduate school and start earning $250K per year. Yea.. try getting around this one.

Comparisons: Russian grandmothers are the EXPERTS in the field of finding people to compare EVERY single life situation to. I was a Marketing major. My grandmother immediately hunted out everyone in Brighton Beach that has a son/daughter/friend/19th cousin/housekeeper that was/is a marketing major. Every single visit starts with something along the lines of “So Ira, the one who lives on Brighton 3rd, her son went to Garvaaaard for Maaaaarkiiiting, he doesn’t do anything, he sits and works hard and he only makes $70,000 a year, CAN YOU IMAGINE, Garvaaard, and you? You went to ciiiityyy schooool, some Baruuuuchhh college!” Apparently I’m destined to fail. Somehow every time I see her there’s a new russian marketing professional that she’s heard of who went to an ivy league and isn’t making a sufficient amount of money by her standards.

Food: I am trying to be vegan. This transition started with being a vegetarian and this was BEYOND my grandmother’s perception and is called “Stupid American”. When I told her I’m not eating meat she went “So what, I don’t understand, no kielbasa? how about chicken?” Family dinners were especially lovely since even in most russian salads there’s either meat or fish, and it went something like: “Nika, have some Russian Salad! It’s salad, there’s only bologna in here, no meat!” Yea… Futhermore… My not eating meat clearly means I’m going to fall over and die tomorrow since there’s apparently NOTHING else in the world to eat except meat… So I always just walk around hungry. Things my grandmothers considers to be ‘vegetarian’ include: turkey, chicken (“white meat is good, is like for vegetarian”), caviar, and if it’s a salad it’s automatically for vegetarians regardless of whats in it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my grandmother and possibly love her even more because of all this. I’m also pretty sure that she’s not the only Russian grandma that never left Soviet Russia circa 1972.