Rocket Chair

I don't live near my grandparents. In fact, my parents actually moved to Hawaii to get away from my extended family. (Later when they accidentally had me they couldn't afford to live there anymore and moved back to the mainland, ending their peter pan adventure) So I don't really have much experience with older people. Both my grandfathers are dead and, except for seeing them every few years, the only time I really talk to my grandmothers is during my parents' weekly phone call home. Even then it's really only once every two months or so that I'm around for the calls. Its not that I don't like my grandparents, its just that I don't really know them, so talking to them is a bit odd. I know some people dislike the elderly, but I love them, 'cause they're too weak to attack me so I don't fear them. And they have good stories. Sometimes they even get riled up about Papa Joe and the red menace, which I like.

So when a friend of mine mentioned she worked at a nursing home, I was all ears. And when she said I could come volunteer I was ecstatic. I had worked in a doctor's office previously, doing clerking and phones, and in my day I'd talked to enough nursing homes and sent enough faxes and mail to think that I had the skills needed to deal with what I perceived went on in a nursing home. I mean I'm used to catheters, colostomies and diapers. As well as being used to senility and mental problems, which I don't mean to make light of here -- I mean I'm not evil or anything and it would just be wrong to go into a nursing home and then laugh at people for just being old -- but most or this has to do with people just being crazy regardless of age. Most of the people were actually around fifty, or completely mentally there and just preferred the atmosphere or needed assistance due to physical injury, which left them perfectly mentally healthy. So presented here in a list is the creepiest (non me evil) and coolest stuff I saw and was told by, umm, well I'll refer to her as Mrs. Shush.

- Man partially paralyzed who would begin to, umm, gratify himself and then press the nurse switch so he could catch them off guard and have an audience. Well, at least for a few seconds.

- Female patient who would steal things and later be found gratifying herself with them. Situation came to a head when she took care takers' equipment. I think she was moved to another facility.

- Man with testicles the size of my fists, apparently proud of his enormous balls. I was told he'd talk about them during shower (which means Snoop Diggity Dogg, I guess you're not the G with the biggest sack!).

- Hairy man/former preacher who, I'm told, was caught masturbating to computer porno a few times. Later told he had a hairy ass!

- Dish-washing lad came by picking up trays and tells me "I hate this job so fucking much" even though he just met me! Two weeks later he quits.

- Female patient has the coolest shag rug tapestry of the virgin Mary on her wall (I want it so much!).

- Patients accuse me of doing a college study on dying

General fun facts!

- Some old people love to drink and do it all day long!

- Viagra used to be a controlled drug, doled out only by care givers at a patient's request. Later it was made policy that patients had to self-administer the drug as it was found out that many patients took it to use alone, and it creeped out the care givers to play an integral part in the turkey-jerking process.

- The elderly and committed watch the same programs I do including Reading Rainbow, cartoons and the Golden Girls.

Later, while watching He-Man cartoons, I tell Gabe about my day and he tells me about Rocket Chair. A segment on Nightline about abuse at rest homes where one care giver insisted on taking a patient in a wheel chair and running at her bed full speed, and then stopping suddenly so as to catapult her into bed. All the while the patient moaned "No, no rocket chair". Now while abuse is never funny, rocket chair is!

I don't want to come off as evil; I mean, lots of normal stuff happened on my trip to the rest home, and lots of cool, normal old people both "all there" and "senile" were there, and all in all it was a fun thing to do, but the craziness was sort of the icing on that cake. Really, most of these people were all there, and just normally creepy for whatever reason. To reiterate, I like old people, (being a history major I'd probably end up talking to loads of them in the course of research, whether I liked them or not), I don't mean to mock those afflicted. I'm not evil, but Rocket Chair is goddam funny!