Chapter 1 - Grandma On Guard

Paula
Call it what you want: night shift, night guard, night watch, graveyard shift, anchor watch if you're a naval type, it means you are awake while everybody sane in the world is sound asleep.

Well, if you don't count those who have insomnia, anyway. Then there's the good old infidelity shift. Not that I have to worry about infidelity in my case - a sixty year old grandmother is rather unlikely to be getting a little on the side in this big, old, industrial complex.

That's me, security guard for good ole One-Stop Security, on duty from eleven PM to seven-thirty AM, insuring that nothing walks away from the place and nothing odd happens on my shift. I can hear you asking (I have exceptional hearing, a plus for my job) 'just what is a sixty year old grandmother doing patrolling an industrial complex all night?' Not a bad question, but the answer is a bit complicated. So sit back and I'll fill you in.

I wasn't always a grandmother, which shouldn't come as a big surprise to anyone, and back when I was nineteen I gave birth to my first child. Not too long after a couple of more followed and I opted to be a stay-at-home mother while my husband brought home the bacon. Not unusual for the days of my youth, that 1950s work ethic wasn't all that far in the past. Hell, there were still people who got exercised about women wearing pants back then, fer cryin' out loud!

So when we needed some extra money to keep the family afloat, I started helping my brother, who ran a small security company. I started doing some of the book-work and such, and got to know many of the people working there. As these things go in a family business I was soon doing schedules and even sweet-talking new customers into signing a contract.

Then one night one of the dispatchers had some sort of problem and called in sick, so I volunteered to take over for the night. After breastfeeding three kids in five years, staying up all night got to be a habit; pulling a night shift was no problem.

I found out I liked it more than the book-work, so everybody was glad to have me working the phones and radios on the third shift. Pretty cushy job, if you could stay awake. Lots of time to read when things were quiet, no problems with some fool worrying about a poor, defenseless, vulnerable woman working alone late at night because it was my brother who owned the company.

Things started out pretty well, he was slowly increasing the business and getting a small reputation, but my brother was never one to be the slow and steady type. He started making some pretty foolish decisions. Oh yeah - since I was working under the table the tax man didn't have to know about it, which was fine for both of us.

Ah - I hear the next question! What the heck is the head of a security company doing fiddling the IRS? Why would his sister be dumb enough to fiddle the IRS, too?

For my brother, it's because he's a damnfool idiot. Just because he's my big brother doesn't mean I haven't figured him out. For me, it was called being broke. With three kids to feed and a husband who's still underpaid, we needed that money the tax man wanted to gobble. OK, I'm not proud of it, but if the choice is between feeding my kids and feeding some politician: screw politics! It wasn't until forty years later I figured out that it wasn't the brightest of ideas.

As for my brother, he took the 'infidelity shift' quite literally, I don't know why Sharon put up with him except maybe that he made a lot of money for her to spend. Not my problem, but what was my problem occurred a few years later when I realized he had made some very unfortunate friends and his business would be in the toilet sooner rather than later.

As I mentioned earlier, this was the start of women's liberation or whatever euphemism you want to hang on it, and bigger companies were reluctantly hiring token women to make themselves look good. Cynical? Who, me? I still needed a job, so I pulled in some contacts (they call it networking these days), cobbled up a resume (only lying slightly about my experience in the security biz), bought myself a female version of the Power Suit and talked my way into a job as a security guard for a reputable company. Even though there was wailing and gnashing of teeth from the upper echelons about a woman security guard working the night shift, the publicity hacks loved it. I even got my picture in the paper in my snazzy new uniform with all those do-dads hanging off my belt standing in front of my patrol car. The patrol car was part of the whole deal, as that meant I wasn't walking around alone in some rather iffy places and could grab the mike and holler for help if need it.

As for my idiot brother, he spent some years behind bars and I wasn't at all sympathetic, but at least I wasn't part of his lousy company any longer.

This whole thing with me on night shift worked out surprisingly well as Josh and I were home in the evenings with the kids. Where it failed was during the teenage years. Hindsight revealed our middle child needed a lot more supervision than we provided. She was a sneaky bitch, hiding her escapades from her trusting parents. Yeah, I know. How could a damned security guard be so trusting? Josh and I tried, but she ended up in rehab several times before disappearing. If you think a tough bitch of a security guard can't cry, then I'm here to tell you you're wrong. I bawled my eyes out, and so did Josh in his manly way. Once again, I called in some favors and had some pretty good people search for her but she was gone.

My wonderful husband and my two other kids got me through all the trauma. We got much closer as a family and eventually we went on with life. The kids went to college and turned out pretty good, if you'll pardon a proud Momma saying so. Even though Josh was earning enough for us to live on quite comfortably, I liked being a security guard and kept at it, although by then I had enough seniority to work days and we were able to sleep in the same bed for more than some rather good sex. Frankly the sex got better after Josh got himself fixed and we didn't have to worry about another kid making an appearance.

You've heard of Mr Murphy and his lousy laws, haven't you? If anything can go wrong, it will. Then there's the corollary: If there's an absolute worst time for this to happen, then that's when it 's going to happen. According to the log on my shiny new, expensive cell phone that time was 2:47 PM on a Wednesday afternoon. I was thirteen minutes from the end of my shift so I said 'What the hell?' and took a personal call in spite of company policy. Why not? Nothing was happening on the job at that precise moment.

The call was from Colorado, so I assumed it was somebody wanting to sell me something - even back then those annoying assholes were cold calling anyone and anything. I was wrong - it was a social worker from Denver and she had some devastating news. She apologized for having to tell me over the phone, but she regretted to inform me that Colleen, my missing daughter, had died giving birth to a child a few hours earlier. It had taken some time to find her next-of-kin and blah-blah-blah. I wasn't really listening by that time.

This time the tough bitch security officer just gave it up and started weeping right there in the lobby of a fancy office building and she didn't care who saw her. My replacement arrived just at that moment and threw all decorum and tough-guy image out the proverbial window, holding on to me and saying the things you say to a woman in distress. The concierge, realizing that something momentous was happening, quickly took us to an empty office and promised to hold the fort. No fuss, no recriminations, just concern and compassion.

Amazingly, the lady in Denver held on while all this was happening, and after a time I realized she was still on the phone. The woman was good, the woman was patient, and by the time the call was over I learned I suddenly had two more grandchildren several states away and they had no mother or father to take care of them.

At times like these you learn just how resourceful you can be. Josh and I were on a plane less than four hours later and were in Denver an hour or so after that, heading straight for the hospital. My years in security stood me in good stead as we negotiated the maze of officialdom to take our new grandchildren home with us, not to mention burying our emaciated, drug-ravaged daughter. We learned a neighbor was watching our so-far-nameless one year old grandson and that Colleen had told the hospital staff that the new girl-child was to be called Paula. That started the waterworks again - my name is Paula.

I resigned my position as a security guard and Josh and I spent the next eighteen years raising our grandchildren. Believe me - in your forties it's a lot harder to put all that effort into raising kids, but at least you have experience to draw on. Despite their difficult start in life, Paula and Andy were a joy and we couldn't have been prouder to watch both of them walk across the stage, graduating from college with honors. It did seem weird to be Mom to kids the same age as those that called me Grandma, but that's how life goes.

As no good deed goes unpunished, a year later Josh dropped dead of a heart attack. No warning, just an odd look and he was gone. This time the children and grandchildren carried me through. Then Mr Murphy did his little dance of doom and vituperation once again: we had cashed in the life insurance as all the kids were gone and spent most of it on fixing the house. When I applied for Josh's pension, we found out that the company had been looting the pension fund and there was bupkis left after the shouting was done. I had just turned fifty-eight, too soon for Social Security, which was close to bupkis since I had spent all that time working under the table and then taken all that time off to raise children and grandchildren. Sure, there was a bit of Survivor's Benefits from Josh, but the upshot was I would be broke when the savings ran out. Before all this happened the zeros in the bankbook, made our savings look pretty good, but the zeros fly away pretty fast when you need to spend it over the next few decades.

So, with a lot of help from the kids and our friends we cleaned out the house, put it on the market and sold what I could sell that wasn't going to fit in the nice apartment that I could afford. Then I went back to work for One-Stop Security, an outfit that would guard your goodies, investigate your mysteries and move your valuables around in those big armored trucks you see outside banks and shopping malls.

Naturally I was doing what I knew best; Grandma was a Security Guard once more. My contacts in the business could almost be called ancient, but a couple of them were now highly placed. I had trained Brian once upon a time and now he was the boss, so gave me the opportunity to earn a living once again.

So now you know what an old lady is doing wandering around an industrial complex in the middle of the night. Once again, my super-acute hearing tells me you are asking 'Just what the heck does all this drama have to do with crossdressing?' For that you'll have to wait for the next chapter