When I was a kid, I'd visit my grandma at her gold-plated, mirrored Hollywood FLA condo, and I'd sit on her bed while she pulled jewelry out of her white enamel dresser that my Poppy (papi) or various other relatives and admirerers had given to her. I'd pick out the stuff I liked, and she'd promise it to me--when she died.

When she did die, turns out I didn't earn anything at all, but I did just happen to pick up Cynthia Kaplan's Why I'm Like This* that same month, which has a poingant yet hilarious scene of her grandmother doing just the same thing. In fact, the whole darn book, a series of essays about her family and childhood as a Jew in a gentile suburb, seamlessly blends funny with poignant. Ya'll should read it. I'm gonna lend it to both my sisters.

Hehehe. Note irony of Walmart review.