Monday - Grouchy Granny
Oct. 1st, 2007 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking that when I shot an obscene finger gesture at a 97-year-old woman this last Saturday, it really wasn't one of my finest moments. Still, I'm having a hard time feeling sorry about it. She is an evil, unpleasant old biddy and I only wish I had said out loud the message I signaled toward her turned back. I blame my silence on my mother, who taught me as a child that in no uncertain terms was I ever allowed to trash talk little old ladies. My mother never met Faye, though, of room 16C of the Lawrence Street Nursing Center. If she had, she would have taught me that there exceptions to every rule, and that sometimes even little old ladies deserve to be called ugly names and told where to go.
Faye is the roommate of my mother-in-law, Doris, who is recuperating from a stroke she had three weeks ago. The stroke did not damage Doris' intellect, but it did leave the right side of her body paralyzed. She was released from the hospital last week, and Jeff and his brother moved her to a nursing home close by to us while she undergoes therapy to learn how to function again. Saturday was my first chance to visit her there.
I can't say that I actually met Faye where I during my stay, since she never spoke to me and only looked at me long enough to give me a dirty look so I would know I wasn't welcomed. The rooms in the nursing home are small, even smaller than the dorm room I lived in college. I'm sympathetic to Doris' plight of having the roommate from hell. One of the things I learned in college from living in a dorm is when you are randomly assigned to share a room with a complete stranger, the odds are that the person you wind up with will someone you would have picked on your own. Not that it matters. From living in off-campus apartments in college, I learned that the fastest and most permanent way to ruin a friendship is to decide to live with that person. People need their space, and the nature of the roomie relationship is that you impede on each other's space and get on each other's last nerve. Faye reminds me a lot of one of my own college roommates, right down to the way that she tacks stuffed animals and baby dolls to the walls of her side of the room, where they resemble taxidermied trophies of cute innocent things she has killed by running them over with her wheelchair.
During my visit with Doris, Faye watched TV with her back to us. In order to be heard and understood with her paralysis, Doris must articulate very carefully, and it helps if there is not a lot of background noise. Faye made a point of turning up the television louder and louder as our conversation progressed, finally blasting it at full volume so that we were drowned out by a commercial for an online travel service. I'm certain that Faye was not interested in the travel service, since she has no access to a computer and looks far too frail to travel, even if she could log on and book a flight. She just didn't like that there were people in her room talking (she does not seem to believe that Doris has any right to be in there). That was when I flipped her off. I must have done it on Doris' blind side, because if she had seen me she would have laughed. After only two days, he has already discerned that Faye is her mortal enemy.
It would be nice if Faye would travel, or perhaps kick the same bucket most of her contemporaties already have. Still, I doubt she will keel over anytime soon, since some people are simply too mean to die. I suspect that Heaven doesn't want her, and Hell is too afraid to take the likes of her in, for fear that she would try to take over and start running the place. Until God and the Devil resolve the issue with a cosmic game of rock, paper, scissors (or maybe a coin toss), we are stuck with her here on earth.
My brother-in-law spoke with the front desk, and it seems that Faye has been through more than her fair share of roommates. She makes a point to be so unpleasant that no one stays with her for long. Yet the staff keeps assigning new victims to her lair, and Doris is the latest one. I will pressure Jeff to demand that she is moved, but that is all I can do.
It reminds me of an inmate that my younger brother, who works as a prison guard for the Texas Department of Correction, told me about. The TDC, an institution not generally known for its compassion, has made it a policy to not assign cell mates to live with this man, because he has raped every one he has ever had. After the third one (about 2 too many, to my mind), they decided it's best that he live alone. It blows my mind that the nursing home poor Doris is in is less compassionate than the Texas prison system. Sure, Faye is not capable of physical assaults like the prisoner my brother knows, but is only because almost 100 years of meanness have taken their toll on her body. Still, her mind is sharp as a tack and her tongue as sharp as a razor, and she uses these weapons assault any unfortunate person assigned to sleep in the room with her.
If Faye gives me trouble the next time I visit poor Doris, I think I will wheel her down the hall and leave her in the first broom closet I find. Sure, it's not a nice thing to do to a frail little only lady, but it's my job as family to help Doris out while she recuperates. I happen to think that if Doris were not in a wheelchair herself, she'd do the same thing.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
* My college roommate was more brutal than Faye, who only pins her victims with tacks through their fabric shoulders. My insane roomie drove nails through the plush bellies of her stuffed animals – dozens of them – and impaled them all over the walls to her bedroom. I'm not kidding. The effect was amazingly creepy.
Faye is the roommate of my mother-in-law, Doris, who is recuperating from a stroke she had three weeks ago. The stroke did not damage Doris' intellect, but it did leave the right side of her body paralyzed. She was released from the hospital last week, and Jeff and his brother moved her to a nursing home close by to us while she undergoes therapy to learn how to function again. Saturday was my first chance to visit her there.
I can't say that I actually met Faye where I during my stay, since she never spoke to me and only looked at me long enough to give me a dirty look so I would know I wasn't welcomed. The rooms in the nursing home are small, even smaller than the dorm room I lived in college. I'm sympathetic to Doris' plight of having the roommate from hell. One of the things I learned in college from living in a dorm is when you are randomly assigned to share a room with a complete stranger, the odds are that the person you wind up with will someone you would have picked on your own. Not that it matters. From living in off-campus apartments in college, I learned that the fastest and most permanent way to ruin a friendship is to decide to live with that person. People need their space, and the nature of the roomie relationship is that you impede on each other's space and get on each other's last nerve. Faye reminds me a lot of one of my own college roommates, right down to the way that she tacks stuffed animals and baby dolls to the walls of her side of the room, where they resemble taxidermied trophies of cute innocent things she has killed by running them over with her wheelchair.
During my visit with Doris, Faye watched TV with her back to us. In order to be heard and understood with her paralysis, Doris must articulate very carefully, and it helps if there is not a lot of background noise. Faye made a point of turning up the television louder and louder as our conversation progressed, finally blasting it at full volume so that we were drowned out by a commercial for an online travel service. I'm certain that Faye was not interested in the travel service, since she has no access to a computer and looks far too frail to travel, even if she could log on and book a flight. She just didn't like that there were people in her room talking (she does not seem to believe that Doris has any right to be in there). That was when I flipped her off. I must have done it on Doris' blind side, because if she had seen me she would have laughed. After only two days, he has already discerned that Faye is her mortal enemy.
It would be nice if Faye would travel, or perhaps kick the same bucket most of her contemporaties already have. Still, I doubt she will keel over anytime soon, since some people are simply too mean to die. I suspect that Heaven doesn't want her, and Hell is too afraid to take the likes of her in, for fear that she would try to take over and start running the place. Until God and the Devil resolve the issue with a cosmic game of rock, paper, scissors (or maybe a coin toss), we are stuck with her here on earth.
My brother-in-law spoke with the front desk, and it seems that Faye has been through more than her fair share of roommates. She makes a point to be so unpleasant that no one stays with her for long. Yet the staff keeps assigning new victims to her lair, and Doris is the latest one. I will pressure Jeff to demand that she is moved, but that is all I can do.
It reminds me of an inmate that my younger brother, who works as a prison guard for the Texas Department of Correction, told me about. The TDC, an institution not generally known for its compassion, has made it a policy to not assign cell mates to live with this man, because he has raped every one he has ever had. After the third one (about 2 too many, to my mind), they decided it's best that he live alone. It blows my mind that the nursing home poor Doris is in is less compassionate than the Texas prison system. Sure, Faye is not capable of physical assaults like the prisoner my brother knows, but is only because almost 100 years of meanness have taken their toll on her body. Still, her mind is sharp as a tack and her tongue as sharp as a razor, and she uses these weapons assault any unfortunate person assigned to sleep in the room with her.
If Faye gives me trouble the next time I visit poor Doris, I think I will wheel her down the hall and leave her in the first broom closet I find. Sure, it's not a nice thing to do to a frail little only lady, but it's my job as family to help Doris out while she recuperates. I happen to think that if Doris were not in a wheelchair herself, she'd do the same thing.
* My college roommate was more brutal than Faye, who only pins her victims with tacks through their fabric shoulders. My insane roomie drove nails through the plush bellies of her stuffed animals – dozens of them – and impaled them all over the walls to her bedroom. I'm not kidding. The effect was amazingly creepy.
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in the first broom closet
Date: 2007-10-01 08:12 pm (UTC)Re: in the first broom closet
Date: 2007-10-02 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-01 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-01 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-01 09:30 pm (UTC)Grandma Kate looked a little like she didn't know what to do with me at that point. I never wavered though. I stand by that.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-01 10:13 pm (UTC)Some little old ladies should've died long ago. Is she bitter because SHE doesn't get visitors?
Roommates are fun. I actually got a long very well with my college dorm roommie. Except that one time when we had a shouting match in the hallway, that the whole dorm heard... :P
no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 12:09 am (UTC)I totally agree...I think that some people are under the delusion that elderly folks are one step descended from heaven or something. Obviously, as you've experienced, they are just people like anyone else...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 05:29 am (UTC)I love these little pieces you do.
And I know we've talked about it and your issues with pursuing publication, but... You should go back through your LJ and see how many there are. Maybe take a slow afternoon at home or boring morning at work and tag your way through some of the pieces you are most proud of.
I think you would be surprised and delighted...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 09:39 pm (UTC)You may want to read it before I decide I've said too much and lock this entry down...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 02:20 pm (UTC)its sad that you had to deal with that... i think my experience with an old college roommate/friend was one of the rarities in life.... now adays... i consider her to be on of my greatest friends.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 02:42 pm (UTC)the frist roommate i had was a girl i kinda new from an old job but we were never what i would have considered as being friends.... that quickly disintegrated when i realized how lost she was.... she was the kind of person that changed according to the people she was around, never truly being "herself"... it was hard to deal with when she got to be around people i didnt like hahah
then there was dara, whom i met and became friends with in college, then we roomed together for a bit... we still to this day talk about how that was the great semester of our lives :)....
sometimes, its all in the mentality of the people involved... if you cant get over some things that happened in high school however many years later, maybe theres something else thats really going on?