Relatively Annoying

Alex Jefferson expects a miserable week when his parents leave on a second honeymoon and send him to stay with his grandparents. His preferred grandmother is away touring quilt factories, so he must endure the relatives who never remember his name, eat dinner before four in the afternoon, offer prunes for snacks, and repair nearly everything with duct tape.

Grandpa soon confiscates Alex's video game because he considers it a waste of time. He orders the boy to play horseshoes instead, although the yard has only one shoe and the stakes stand about a hundred feet apart. Grandma puts Alex to work crushing tomatoes with his feet for the huge supply of homemade ketchup she has produced. With little television and nothing else he wants to do, Alex decides he must charm Grandpa into returning the game.

His effort at the early dinner goes badly. Grandpa complains that Grandma's cooking tastes like soap, while Grandma discusses sick, imprisoned, and dying friends and relatives. Alex tries to suggest a pleasant family outing, but even a visit to the hospital becomes another conversation about illness and death. When he begs them to change the subject, they accuse him of rudeness and blame his video game for exciting him. Alex must sit silently through the rest of the long meal, certain that he has ruined his chances.

The next morning, Grandpa repairs a leaking pipe with more duct tape and again refuses to return the game. Alex complains that Grandpa is wasting his own life by always being grumpy. Grandpa sends him back to the horseshoe pit, where three hours of walking between the distant stakes leave Alex with a sore arm. Grandpa's duct-tape treatment makes the injury feel even worse.

A real-estate representative named Mr. Harrick visits with another offer for the property. A developer has already bought the former cow pasture and now wants the house and remaining land. Grandma refuses to consider selling, but Alex retrieves the discarded offer and discovers it is worth $350,000. He imagines his grandparents escaping their crumbling home, buying something modern, and finally taking the trip to Alaska that Grandma has always dreamed about. Grandma forbids him to raise the subject again and does not tell Grandpa.

A telephone call brings news that Grandpa's old friend George has died of pneumonia. Grandpa hides his grief behind a joke, takes a shovel, and walks into the woods. Worried about the weather, Alex follows from a distance and sees him dig up a metal box.

Grandpa reluctantly explains that he and three high-school friends buried the box after graduation. They had promised to reunite and open it together, but life carried them in different directions. George eventually returned, yet illness kept the group from fulfilling its plan. Now all of Grandpa's old companions are gone.

The keepsakes reveal the dreams each boy carried. George's baseball glove recalls his attempt to become a professional player before a knee injury led him into pharmaceuticals. A failed device designed to trim five toenails at once represents Charlie's unsuccessful inventions. Grandpa's own pruning shears came from his father when he was eight and marked the beginning of a lifetime as a farmer. With the farm shrinking and the cows gone, Grandpa quietly wonders whether it is time to move and discover something new.

Alex tells him about the developer's offer and argues that selling would provide a better home and the journey Grandma wants. Grandpa reveals that he does not need the sale to take her to Alaska. Tired of watching her sigh over travel photographs, he sold the cows and pasture to buy anniversary tickets. He plans to return with her to the gravel pit where he proposed, kneel as though asking again, and present the tickets instead of a ring. Beneath his complaints and teasing, Grandpa has prepared an unusually thoughtful surprise.

Learning that Grandma concealed the $350,000 offer makes Grandpa angry, and he confronts her. She explains that the farm has been his home and work for six decades. Since selling the cows, he wanders through each morning without a purpose, and she fears losing the house would leave him even more lost. Her refusal is not stubbornness or a desire to keep the money from him; it is an attempt to protect the life he loves.

Grandpa then admits that he sold the cows to finance her Alaska trip, accidentally ruining his carefully planned surprise. Grandma is delighted and apologizes for hiding the offer. The couple understands the sacrifice each has made for the other, though their affectionate relationship quickly returns to familiar grumbling. Grandpa jokes that they might reconsider if the developer offers a million dollars.

Alex still does not recover his video game, and his grandparents remain eccentric. They argue over medicine hidden in soup, the timing of dinner, and whether Grandpa could cook for himself. Yet Alex no longer sees only two annoying old people. After learning about their memories, losses, hopes, and quiet love, he understands them well enough to appreciate the family beneath all the complaints.