Disclaimer: I love my grandma. A lot.

My grandma is a small woman. At her prime, she was 5'2" and weighing 90 pounds. However, aging was unkind to her. She has shrunken down to 4'8" and those 4 inches that she lost vertically invited some of their friends to come join them horizontally.

(That's a nice way of saying she's put on a few pounds.)

Anyway, on to my story. Seeing as my grandmother has a large girth and short limbs, many things people think of as "simple" are difficult for her. Add arthritis into the mix and the poor lady's doomed. Walking, reaching, and getting into a car are just a few of these "simple" things that cause problems for my grandma. Naturally, she's an independent lady, and hates being helped with these things. (So don't think I'm a horrible person for standing by and watching her struggle!)

While watching her struggle through most of these tasks is rather sad, one of the most comical things to watch my grandmother do is put on her seatbelt. After the painful process of getting into the car, (step one leg up, grasp the handle, pull herself onto the seat, bring the other leg in, reach and reach and reach and finally get ahold of the car door to close it) she must begin securing herself in the seat. First, she reaches her relatively short left arm across her body and grabs the seatbelt. Then she must use all her strength to pull the seatbelt over to the left side of her body, where the buckle is located. Halfway through pulling the seatbelt across her body, she switches it into her right hand. After switching to the right hand, she begins attempting to latch the seatbelt into the buckle. Because of her large girth, she is unable to see the buckle, (as made apparent from the attempts to see it and only succeeding in seeing her shoulder) and because of her relatively short arms, she cannot feel the buckle either.

At this point in the process, we are halfway to our destination. My grandmother has gotten the buckle over to the latch, but now the problem is getting them to click together. She begins blindly searching with the buckle for the latch, hitting it 50+ times before finally making it into the hole. Finally, just as she latches it, we pull up to our destination and she begins the slightly less difficult process of getting out of the car.