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6:57 p.m. - 2004-10-12
Little Old Ladies

Little Old Ladies

My 88 year old Mother in Law lives in a senior citizen apartment building. They get help in filling out paper work, an in house beauty shop, and all kinds of activities like bingo, holiday parties and monthly gatherings to celebrate all the birthdays in the month. The hallways are painted bright white and everyone has a little shelf outside of their unit which they decorate for the season. The furniture in the social room and the lobby is nice and new and cushy and everything is brightly lit and very clean. I call it the Sunny Day Happy Rest Home. It is not a nursing home but cute little apartments that are subsidized by the county and a rather nice place for a little old lady to retire in, the only drawback being, due to the age of the residents, the ambulance is a frequent visitor and is a constant reminder of how little time they have left.

One of the wonderful things about the Sunny Day Happy Rest Home, is the little busses that take them on excursions. There are several per week and there is no reason for any of these ladies to get bored. Some of these excursions are to the river boat casinos but they are usually to a store or a mall.

Mondays they go to Walmart and they never miss a chance to go to Walmart. The trip to Walmart always includes lunch at the snack stand where they split a hot dog or a soft pretzel or something.

Every so often there they lose a little old lady on one of these excursions. Anyone with an elderly Mother or Grandmother can relate to not being able to get Grandma out of the store. One time the bus left someone at a mall and no one missed her until they got back to the Sunny Day Happy Rest Home. They all took a ride back on the bus to find that the lady had called her daughter to come and get her. God must have a special place for the bus drivers who take the little old ladies on these trips.

On another excursion. They searched the entire store and couldn't find Gladys. Finally the bus had to leave and when they got back, there was Gladys, sitting in the lobby waiting for all the other "girls". The group of Granny's all approached her wondering what happened. It seems that Gladys, forgot she was on an excursion with "the girls" and phoned a taxi to take her home. She remembered how she had gotten to the store once she got back and decided to wait for the rest of the group so they wouldn't be worried.

When Mom first moved here to be near us, I would take her shopping. We would be in the store for hours. She would take her own cart and watch what I put into mine. Every time I put something in my cart, she would put 4 of them into hers. When I stopped at the deli and ordered 1/2 pound of Peppered Turkey Breast, she ordered a pound. I asked her, "Oh, do you like pepper on your turkey breast?"

She said "No, but Michael does."

I said, "No, Mike doesn't like pepper."

"Then why are you buying it?" she asked inquizitively.

"Because I like it, Mom....I like it."

"Oh" she said, cancelling her order for the turkey breast.

I said to her, "Is that why you are buying multiples of everything I am buying, because you want to buy stuff that Mike likes?"

She nodded her head and we spent about 15 minutes putting back all the stuff that I got for myself that Mike didn't like. At the end of the trip, most of her grocery's were for us...bless her heart. After that I encouraged Mike to take his Mother shopping. Once, she checked out before me and I wasn't paying attention to her while I was loading up the conveyor belt with my stuff. When I was done checking out, she was gone. In 3 short minutes, I had lost her. I looked around the store and then went outside figuring that she went out to wait. Still no sign of Mom. Finally, she came running out of the store, breathless and panicked. I turned to see her and said, "where did you go?"

"Oh!" she said, "when I was done getting checked out I realized that they overcharged me 4 cents and I had to go to the service counter to get my 4 cents back...better in my pocket than their's"

For a while there Mom tried to be independent. She found another old lady who still had a car and a driver's license. We thought that it was such a break for us, not needing to take her shopping when she confessed that her driving buddy really wasn't all there mentally anymore.

"It's Ok," she said, "I help her drive. When she starts to go off the road or into the oncoming traffic I tell her. I sit real close to her so I can grab the wheel if she starts to fall asleep."

I am glad that Mike and the senior bus take Mom to the store now.

We have a giant store they just put up near here called Meijer. It is the most Mega of the mega stores. I am afraid to go inside it is so big. Mom was going to go there on the senior bus and was really looking forward to it. She found a coupon for pitted prunes on sale for 99 cents per box and figured at that price, she could enjoy many many days of regularity. (Remember my posting on the Poop Reports?). My daughter, Michelle, decided to take her on her day off instead, because we were worried that she would get lost and not find her way back to the bus.

About 1:00 PM, I got a call at work. "Hi Mom?...I lost Grandma.....we are at Meijer and she was looking at a blouse on a rack and I turned around to check out some t shirts on another rack and when I turned around, she was gone."

I said, "Well look for her, what am I supposed to do about it from here."

"I don't know," she said, "I thought maybe you would have an idea as to where old ladies go when they get lost in a store."

After a couple of calls to her dad, all while looking around the store for Grandma, she spotted her, looking at the same blouse she was looking at when she disappeared. Is there some black hole that little old ladies fall into in a store?

So...diaryland....what are your little old lady stories?

P. I. Yarnsmith

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