Sp I'm in the commons having coffee with a few neighbors when Gladys arrived. Yesterday afternoon as I was folding newsletters by hand (why don't they have a folding machine - probably do, but want me to feel useful) and as the EMT's were looking after another guest (yes, we are really just guests) who had collapsed playing bingo (very difficult game) Gladys sat down to talk. She was talking about her faith and telling me about her upbringing. In the course of the conversation I shared I had worked with youth of various ages in church related setting for 35 years. You would have thought I was the Lord Himself descending from heaven to take her back with him. She was touching me, slapping me on the arm and shoulder and bouncing around like a kid in a candy shop. She was happy to know. I have never made a big deal about having been a pastor. Too many preconseived notions about who I am and what I should be doing. I wanted them to know me, so I doled out personal information a little at a time. Now that I have been here a year and a half, most know I was a minister, but a few are still surprised.
But this morning she wanders in with a sad and angry face, spoke to no one and sat at the table behind me. They was there less than two minutes when she up and left. Bipolar was the comment floating around the table. She comes back a little later with a bottle of wine and drinks large gulps at out table. I am kicked under the table by Gail and get a smirk from here. She is about to laugh out loud and I am hoping she can contain herself. Three minutes later she leaves again and comes back in ten minutes, sits back at the table with us again. This time she had a very large can of beer. She pops the top, takes a swig and gets up with her walker to go away. Since no one has talked to her, I asked if she was going shopping. She barks that she is not. I'm going for a smoke. And off she goes. There are now only three of us. Ignoring what she said and did we continued out weird conversation about home remedies when we were young and the toughness of our parents.
Anything that bulged on me or was stuck in me got a poltus (egg and milk mixture soaked in bread and taped on). In Kindergarten, when I got stung on the head by a bee, some hair was shave and I went to school with one taped on top. No big deal. Most kids came with one at some time or other. Then there was Iodine, Castor Oil, Ben Gay, the pink stuff you swollow to make your tummy feel better and some home made concocation to make you throw up. Of course, they all seemed to work. We are not going to a doctor for something we can fix ourselves. When I nearly cut my right thumb off making a gun (what to you think little boys make?) and I was bleeding like a stuck pig, dad had a look and said it didn't cut through. Let's get some bandages and wrap that up. Why would I go to the doctor just to prevent a little scar. Scars were the marks of real men.
But I digress (as usual). Gladys left for her smoke, stormed back in a little later with the can of bear in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other and left a note on a nearby table and left. There is no smoking inside the building. I doubt she cared at the moment. She was in a hurry to do something and nothing was going to get in her way and not one was going to tell her what to do. If you haven;t figured it out by now, us old folks are just grown up stubborn rebelous very old teenagers. They also are so entertaining I never turn on daytime TV. This is up close and personal and you never know what is going to happen next. I'm just waitig for the wrecked marriages, divorces and abortions that usually come, but they may be too far over the hill for those things. I'll have to content with weirdness, anger, gossip and health and then the occasional comic rellief.
No comments:
Post a Comment