I Was Not Good Enough at Math to Join a Cult

I have been telling everyone for years that my Grandma was a few ants short of a picnic. Everyone assumed I was simply being critical UNTIL she started opening her door wearing no pants and a shirt bearing 500 safety pins. THEN, my ideas stop being "zany." Whatever.

So, said Grandma has never thought highly of me because she hates my mom. Clearly, I am collateral damage in the nightmare known as their relationship. Fine, fine. But since she does not know me, she gets these whacked-out ideas about me.

Take those Hale Bopp Cult people, Heaven's Gate. For the uninitiated, they were a San Diego based group that thought the end of the world was imminent and decided to kill themselves when the Hale Bopp Comet made its appearance. I am not sure if they were going to ride the comet to the afterworld a la a SciFI taxi service or if the comet was a sign of Doomsday. The details were a bit hazy on that part of the story.

In "real life" (as much as they dallied in that), they were computer and math geeks. {Stay with me, it is important to the story}.

In addition, when they all killed themselves they had a roll of quarters under their pillow, were wearing sweatsuits and had unisex haircuts. They also gave themselves new names that had to end in -ody. For sure, the leader would not have appreciated me calling myself Parody; that kind of mutiny can get you kicked out of cults. Or so I am told.

So, when they committed mass suicide my grandma calls my mom and graciously pops out "Joy dead?" "No, she is just living in Italy." "Well, those crazies in California killed themselves. Figured she did too. What with her liking math and all."

I have now been placed in the "whack job" category because I am good at math? {She also suspected me of being the Unibomber at some point. I will share that story another day}.

Additionally,

1) I have never really jumped on the bandwagon much {except in the 80s when I unwisely wore pink jelly shoes with my brown plaid double-knit polyester school uniform. I looked GOOD, bae-bee}. But since I have left plastic shoes behind, I have spent a lot of time thinking for my own self. Thank you very much.
2) I would never make it in an afterworld that requires exact change. Why else would they have quarters under their pillows? Is Hale Bopp some kind of industrial-strength Tooth Fairy? My idea of heaven is that I have a butler who sorts out the details of my life (or death, as it were).
3) Bad haircut? Not while there is a Veda Salon within a short flight of me.
4) I don't own a sweatsuit. And, in fact, I deplore the mere name "sweat suit." Sounds like something jockeys wear while running in the sauna to thin down before a race.