Monday, October 8, 2007

Maybe at 80, I'll suddenly be athletic, too.

M.J. is complaining about the lack of new posts. The thing of it is, I can't seem to think of anything funny/amusing/thoughtful/important to say. Also, the camera still won't connect to this computer for some reason so we are without visual aids. My brother hasn't opened a mission call, and since there isn't a baby in my tummy -- though that would legitimize the unsightly weight gain -- we don't really have anything to blog about.

Oh. I'm not sure how funny this is to people who don't wander halls lightly scented with scent-o-urine all day, but I giggled for a few minutes. My boss was taking the family of a potential resident on a tour of our facility the other day, which is a somewhat rare happening, when our of the clear blue sky one of our less oriented residents grew upset over something or other. Picture contorted old person fists lashing out from a little hunched body in a wheelchair, the resident-turned-boxing champ screaming vulgar obscenities at, well, whatever. Turns out that while he's usually fairly immobile, he can deliver a wicked kick in the shins from where he sits and those slow hands can whip out to inflict great pain on the more sensitive areas of the anatomy of a particular male nurse. From my safe plot of ground behind the wheelchair I could hear the chaos, see the barely controlled rage on the aforementioned male nurse's face, and the look of horror in my boss's eyes while he debated the merits of calming the resident versus quickly steering the visiting family down the opposite hall.

And the newly hired Director of Social Services? I just sat back with a jolly grin and enjoyed the show. Maybe old age will be cool after all.

Other than that, not too much that we haven't expected; after all, life without a few more outlandishly bizarre tragedies from Paddy's family really would be unusual. Ah, life.

1 comment:

Scott said...

Kristie, I know the exact scene you described. I know it all too well. It's times like that when all there is left to do is to take a step back . . . and egg them on. The step back that I'm referring to is a literal step back to put you out of harm's way. It's amazing to see how strong feeble old people in a wheelchair can be. If we could harness their dementia-anger to turn turbines, our reliance on fossil fuels would be cut in half, at least.