“Oh how nice, another Princess,” my grandma says to me.  She’s watching the news on her glasses again.  To me, it’s all the same so I don’t keep up.

“So what's that then?  She’s like what, billionth in line for the throne?” I ask.

Gramma casts me her evil mom eye, and it makes me laugh, as it always done.  Grandma smiles.  “Nope.  Seventeenth or something like that.  If you go direct and ignore all the waiting-in-lines, yeah I think so.  Jesus, did they just name her Kathleen?  How many derivations of Kate does this family need?”

“Well it can’t be Elizabeth, can it?  Like she’s the still reigning monarch so…isn’t there some rule or something about that?  You know like naming arenas and postage stamps?” 

Gramma creases her forehead in thought.  “I think it’s the money where you’re supposed to be dead, wait – no – that broad’s on everything here.  Hmm.  Yeah maybe it’s the stamps where you have to be dead.  Unless it’s a special tribute to athletes or something.”

“Yeah, or politicians.  Because we just can’t get enough of our politicians.”

Gramma laughs.  “You know, Queen Elizabeth has been on that throne for a hundred years almost.”

“No way.  When was the coronation?”  My mind raked through what little I’d paid attention to about the history of the Royal Family.  I mean, really, what did I care being way across the ocean in a place they only got trotted out to when it was necessary.

“Early 1950’s.  Elizabeth was born in 1926 so she’s umm –“

Gramma isn’t as quick as I am.  Mind you she was using her head instead of her calculating watch.  “She’s a hundred and twenty-four Gram.”

“So she is,” she said. 

“Charles and Camilla’s gone and Kate, William and Harry all getting up there; when do you think she’ll finally hand over the throne?”

“Never.  She’s going to die there she said.  I hope she doesn’t tell people what showing she is going to."

“What?”  That took me a bit aback, I will admit.  “Why?  She’s the Queen, isn’t there normally a bunch of public viewing opportunities with her and the latest, like at the naming ceremony, right?”

“Not since the unfortunate incident of 2030 there isn’t.  She was wheeled out, all frail and everything for one of these events and when Charles was speaking and she thought no one was looking she got out of the wheelchair, brushed off her dress and walked away.  You could tell it was all an act.  Wasn’t long after that Charles succumbed to a heart attack.  She’s here for the long haul.  Don’t know why or how, but there she is.”

“I still don’t even know why the Queen still is a thing anyway, after all she doesn’t have any power at all.”

“No,” Grandma said, “but you know what?  If the world collapses, like cockroaches and Keith Richards, the Queen will still be there.”

God I love my Gramma.