Wrong Turn

The wrong turn

It was way past my bedtime but not my daughter‘s, Cindy, who I’d just retrieved from a school event. I was yawning my way home behind the steering wheel while she informed me of a new approach to allowances that her school chums had stumbled on. Credit cards. Apparently some asinine parents thought teenage girls and credit cards were compatible, like oil and fire. Credit cards would fuel massive indebtedness.

“Really, mom, then I won’t have to keep asking you for money!”
“You’re right, then it would be the bank asking me for money, I can say no to you but not to them.”
“But mom, I’m the only girl in my group that still uses cash, and a limited supply at that. I feel like a kid.” Cindy wailed making me feel like the wicked witch of the west for ruining her life. She just recently got a learner’s permit to start driving. Should I be the one to tell her she is just a kid, and as far as I was concerned would always be my baby. Nope. Why burst her fragile bubble when I’m to tired to enjoy the reaction.
“Cindy, you’ll get a credit card when pigs fly. That ends this conversation.”

Cindy crossed her arms, the signal I was about to get the silent treatment. Wow, that really, really hurts. Not! Unfortunately, the lack of conversation resulted in my exhausted senses being dulled further. It seemed like it was taking me longer to get home than it had to get to the stadium where Cindy had been. Some one had recommended this route as a short cut, it was probably a short cut to his house, not mine!

Cindy stirred. She peered out the windshield and twisted around in her seat. “Mom, don’t we live in the city?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Just curious. It’s dark up ahead and all the city lights are behind us.” She said, stating the obvious. Well, apparently not to me, I hadn’t noticed we were heading in the wrong direction. How could I get lost on a straight street? Never mind, I get lost going to the bathroom at night.

Up ahead some tall, narrow edifice blocked the road. I hoped it was a guard house to the entrance of some rich and wealthy community, if someone was on duty I could ask for help. As it turned out it was an abandoned reform school. I toyed with the idea of copying the address in case I needed to drop Cindy on their doorsteps some day if it ever reopened, which I doubted as all the graduates and prospective admit-tees were running the city.

Well, the school marked the dead end of the street. Backing up I retraced my steps, not necessarily a good move since I was misplaced. Now I could see house lights twinkling merrily in the distance, the very far distance. The saying “go towards the light” made sense now. In the absence of street illumination, I followed the yellow strip highlighted down the center of the road to avoid going off into the sporadically placed ditches. Follow the yellow brick road, played over and over in my mind! Was I in Kansas anymore?

The road forked in front of me with the first street sign we‘ve seen, unfortunately the names weren’t known to me. Should I go right or left? Left. Why not? We turned down Lion Lane, still nothing looked familiar or promising. I take that back , the darkness was becoming very well-known. I had no idea where we were, I just knew where we weren‘t, close to home, or to anybody‘s home for that matter. Some short cut!

Car lights came in to view up ahead. The first sign of human life in twenty minutes. Yippee. They were parked in front of a closed marina. Several men were standing holding up someone who looked injured, while some other man was braced in front of him, fist poised to deliver another blow. My headlights hit square into very perplexed and surprised faces momentarily blinding them.

Scruffy, the family guard dog and my constant companion, was on the back seat whining. He didn’t seem to like the circumstances we had chanced upon. He barked at something on either side of him and waited as though expecting an answer, his ears perked so as not to miss a single word.

Cindy croaked out, “Mom, don’t you dare stop!” She knew full well my constant desire to lend a helping hand in moments of crisis’.
“Like that’s going to happen!” Tonight I was willing to abandon old habits.

I saw lots of blood as the “body’ was released “gently” to the gravel drive way with a loud thump heard behind my closed windows. The man rose to his knees and coughed up more blood. The upright men leapt into their car. Scruffy howled and lunged under my seat in a move so smooth it looked assisted. Grabbing my cell phone from the console I tried to remember the speed dial number I had set 911 for. Cindy yanked the phone from my hands as I reversed directions and sped off spraying loose stones willy-nilly. Driving at night wasn’t my long suit,(is this obvious by now?) and it was even more challenging on this winding back road. I could feel Scruffy’s wet nose on my ankles above my red shoes coupled with his hot breath coming fast and furious.

Cindy was screeching at the 911 dispatcher, explaining we were lost and being chased by strange men, (under normal circumstances that wouldn’t have bothered me, I mean us). No, she yelled, she couldn’t give directions, that’s what lost meant, and no we wouldn’t slow down to read street signs,(even if there were any!) I went airborne over a very large dip in the street and hit the ground hard causing the phone to soar out of Cindy’s hands onto the floor board where neither of us could reach it. Scruffy crawled forward between my legs and encasing the phone in his snout handed it back into to Cindy’s shacking hands complete with slippery doggy slobber.

Shooting started! We were being shot at! I couldn’t duck and see the road but Cindy dived downwards, hands over her head. Did she think her hands were bullet proof. Scruffy, now further out between my legs and interfering with my access to the clutch and accelerator, crossed his paws over his eyes. I tried to shove him back with my feet while I careened from side to side, making us a difficult target to hit. It was essentially close to my normal driving style. Bullets, bullets everyway and no place to hide.

At one point I swerved into some bushes beside a scare crow, so the gangsters could pass us unknowingly. Cindy explained, rather calmly, (if lurching in front of me and stabbing at the light controls is considered calmly) that in order for this to trick to work, I needed to turn off the lights, informing me the scarecrow had more brains than I did, (and she wanted me to give her a credit card, well the answer was still no from this brainless idiot!) I got back on the road but it wasn’t long before the villains realized we pulled a fast one on them and were hot on our tails again.

Around one wide curve a startled deer frozen in my headlights loomed dangerously in my way. I slammed on the brakes and my hunters swerved around me to avoid creaming themselves into my wide heavy behind, and instead found a huge buck leaping onto their hood breaking their windshield with powerful hoofs and leaping back into the heavy foliage.

Finally I could hear sirens and see blinking lights speeding towards us. Yeah, the Calvary. As the bullets whizzed past me, and presumably into my car, I prayed they would be in time.

The patrol cars up ahead went airborne over some more unseen road hazards, their lights bobbing up and down, pre warning me so I could slow down as I approached them. Closer, closer. We barely passed each other, the road being scarcely large enough for one vehicle ( I could swear their rearview mirrors were scrapping the paint from my door as they went by!) I counted three squad cars with six officers. Looking in my rear view mirror I watched as my pursuers abruptly braked, shifted gears and backed up into a deep ditch on the narrow backwoods thoroughfare. Their rear bumper went downwards tipping their hood up into the air. I envisioned the wheels spinning madly now having lost contact with pavement. This gave me cause for a little snicker. Cindy wasn’t seeing any humor yet. I’m sure she was pissed because her hair was messed up.

The very, very naughty men were now imprisoned in their car because the doors were jammed against low lying bushes but they could crawl out through the jagged opening the wonderful stag provided for them. Serves them right, chasing two defenseless women with only a tear gas gun, and a shivering terrier for protection.

A brief futile gun match ensued between the cops and robbers which the police won. The 911 dispatcher instructed us to pull over at a safe distance and wait till an officer could get to us ,take a statement and direct us home. I was shaking so badly my feet were knocking together scuffing the sides of my red shoes, all the while I kept repeating, “I just want to go home!”

Cindy fluffed up her hair while thanking a nice officer for his help. She didn’t have dating privileges yet but she was always on the look out for some one who might wait till she came of age. I didn’t feel like it was my job to tell her that her left ear still glistened with saliva that Scruffy had coated the phone with. Scruffy was now back on the back seat, panting happily giving his attention to the empty spaces on either side of him. Officer Tim Mann proofed to have a good heart as he guided us to a familiar road, this was beyond our expectations.
“Mom, did you see those police cars fly over that dip when they were coming towards us?”
“I sure did!”
“Aren’t police sometimes called pigs?”“Not by anyone in this family.” I declared
“Yea, but you said I could get a credit card when pigs fly. I think that counts!”

Not bothering to comment I just settled into the drivers seat and guided my car home, praying that gunfire was covered in our auto insurance. This was definitely a short cut after all, it cut my life short by about twenty years.

Getting up early the next morning I inspected the back of my car before calling my claim into the insurance agent, not a single bullet hole to report! Unbelievable, especially since we‘d been so close I could see those jerks’ unshaved chins! I went to run an errand and buy a paper which covered the story about a poor local marina owner (local! It didn’t seem very local to me!) who had been held up last night and saved from sure death by a car that had passed by and interfered in the burglars plans. The identities of the car’s occupants were being withheld for their protection. The marina proprietor had been airlifted to nearby hospital where he was expected to make a complete recovery. Several suspects were being detained in the county facilities facing criminal charges.

When Cindy eventually came down to breakfast she found a Visa card by her oatmeal.
“ Mom, is this for real!” She squealed.
“Of course it is, I always make oatmeal for breakfast.”
She flung her arms around my neck and smothered me in kisses before running off to make some phone calls. This was something she needed to share with her amigos before eating.
“ I didn’t realize you liked oatmeal that much!“ I yelled after her. I hope those kisses will keep coming when she discovers it’s a gift card with a limit, one that can be refilled at my discretion. At least her friends don’t have to know.

Two winged guardians hovered above the house in a sitting position, one poured himself a drink of wine from a floating pitcher and leaned back.

“Man that chase last night took it out of me,” he declared gulping down the cold beverage. Liquid poured from a hundred nine millimeter sized holes in his upper body placed there as he shielded the car last night from bullets, more accurately, shielded the occupants from injury.
Angel number two wrapped his wings around himself and laughed heartily. “You look like a garden ornament, a angelic water fountain!” He hooted over and over beside himself with mirth.
His partner whined, “Oh, toot, I might have to pay a visit to “h-e-double hockey sticks” to get these wounds cauterized!” This produced more rounds of laughter.

Inside Scruffy and I peered out the window at the sudden downpour. Strange it was just raining over our house, and the rain water looked rusty, rather, burgundy tinted. Talk about pollution. Scruffy just curled up in a ball and went to sleep feeling safe and content in his solid, motionless bed.

Meal time at the nursing home

One of the residents in a nursing home I’m responsible for as an Ombudsman (representative) has been insisting that I sample the meals they serve, contending if she had to eat this food I should also. I had dragged my feet for so long a trench could have been made and filled with water to make an old fashion moat complete with alligators to eat the leftovers or in some instances before the food even became leftovers, or maybe they could just throw the dietitians in and order out from Burger King!!!

First I went to the administrator and asked for permission to eat, which she gladly consented to by providing me with a free pass. I would have been happier if she had declined my request so I’d have a legitimate excuse to not join Elaine. Then I found the dining room, a major feat for me since I always got turned around in the hallways, eventually I will be able to get around without a seeing eye dog. Heck half the residents here had bad eyesight and Alzheimer’s and could pass me in the hallways on the way to their destinations.

About twenty chair -less white cloth covered tables were being organized in the dining room. Two glasses per resident, one for the mandatory water provided with at each meal, an another for a beverage of their choice. Silverware wrapped in a napkin marked each setting. No candles though, as most of the diners came equipped with oxygen, candles would provide a bang similar to earth’s creation.

Well, here I was on my day off looking for a chair to sit in at a nursing home, the residents came with their own seats, chairs with wheels, and came good and early to claim their spots. Sometimes as early as an hour, what else did they have to do but wait to be fed three times a day? They rolled slowly down the carpeted hallways but soared into the dining room when they reached linoleum where their rides met no resistance. It was amusing watching all these grannies scud missile to their tables in bumper car fashion. No assigned seating meant they had to race to get their desired spots. No assigned seating but definite permanent preferences.

I located Elaine, the resident who had invited me, (or should I say dared me.) It was touted as home cooking served restaurant style. I wonder if this meant the residents were suppose to leave a tip? Nursing homes are trying to improve the dining experience by listening to the consumer, novel idea. Well it certainly wasn’t restaurant style as far as the service went. Plates were brought out individually and to separate tables. No one group of residents were served at the same time. It seemed it would be much easier to use a rolling cart and bring several plates from the buffet counter at once, it would shorten the wait and reduce the workload, but oh well, I’m just here on a dare, I shouldn’t be giving advice, should I? It did give the residents prolonged exposure to socialization and bickering. It also gave me time to scrutinize the plates as they were walked past. Except for the puréed meals (some only ate pureed food due to swallowing difficulties) everything looked presentable, but at with my age and three marriages I know how deceptive looks can be.

Every one wore pastel stripped, terry cloth bibs and I petitioned one for myself, I wanted to fit in, peer pressure and all. Elaine, the perfect hostess, wheeled herself to the laundry cabinet and retrieved one for me.

A frail lady who truly should have been in a wheel chair but was pushing a walker attempted to join us at the table. Elaine and Laura, one the regular table mates, prevented this from happening, very diplomatically.

“Get away from here, you old battle-axe! This isn‘t your table.” They ordered in unison. The newcomer sauntered off perplexed. Nice welcome for a new resident! I did mention they had no assigned seating but definite permanent preferences. Oh, well, this is one time Alzheimer’s is beneficial, the poor lady has already forgotten she was rejected and found some other agreeable companions that invited her to join them, Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart, (so they finally found her!)

Those at my table received their meals before me, individually and over ten minutes time. I eyed their plates suspiciously, trying to identify the entrees. The staff must have thought this would be slow torture like locking me in a room with dripping water and no toilet. Mine finally came, and (wow!), was I thrilled. Boiled lobster, baked potato with sour cream and chives, home baked rolls with tablespoons of melting butter dripping off the sides and a napkin that said “Steak and Ale”. Wrong. Gotcha! Thin, crispy chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and spinach is what was really placed before me. This didn’t look like it would be painful. The residents had different meals depending on their health requirements

Warned that the food is usually too salty I test tasted mine and reached for the salt shaker, I must have different standards of salty.

Laura, sitting across from me, is legally blind so Elaine cut her meat while telling her the location of her various side dishes. Recovering from a stroke and somewhat uncoordinated but completely mentally competent and still active in the community, Elaine is the healthiest of those at my table and the unofficial care taker for dear Laura, whose family appreciate her assisting their love one.

Gracie, sitting next to me complained about her salad.
“Don’t eat it if you don’t like it.” Elaine said.
Lifting her milk glass, Gracie looked at me for approval, “I drink all my milk.”
“Good for you, it’ll keep your bones healthy.” I promised.
“Have you seen my son? He’s going to be here today.” Gracie asked
“She doesn’t know your son, she won’t know if he’s here.” Elaine informed her.
“Quack! Quack! Quack!” came from behind me.
“That man is irritating, he does that every meal time!” Elaine divulged. I turned to visualize the man acting like a duck.
“Maybe he’s just clearing his throat,” I offered
“Nope. He’s just an ___.” Elaine repeated, foul language is a problem of all age groups.
“Oh, my gosh!” Gracie yelled causing me to jump and spill some spinach on my lap, way below my bib.
“What’s wrong?” I asked
“Is my son here yet?” Gracie questioned calmly after having obtained my attention.
“Shut up and eat, she doesn’t know your son!” Elaine commanded, poking at her mashed potatoes. “These potatoes taste funny.” she complained.
I sampled mine, actually they were fair after I had buttered, salt and peppered them, and I said so.
“Her’s look different.” Gracie observed comparing their mash potatoes.
Elaine looked at her meal ticket. Cheesy grits. Well she couldn’t argue with that. The potatoes tasted funny but they were just right for cheesy grits. She forgot what she had checked off on her meal ticket.
“I don’t like my salad.” Gracie repeated.
“Spit it out then,” Elaine said, and she did, all over the table.
“For God’s sake, were you raised in a barn?!” Elaine yelled, pulling lettuce off her plate and throwing it back at Gracie.
Gracie stopped the beverage cart and asked for some coffee, I winced, hoping she didn’t burn her tongue, or worse, me, if she spewed it out like the salad, I inched a litter further away and rotated my bib to cover any flesh facing Gracie.
“I think I see my son,” Gracie said wheeling herself away. Her son must have a visibility problem, I couldn’t see anyone.

The desserts came out and since Gracie had excused herself, I introduced her key lime pie to mine, this meal just got better. The pie was home cooked the same way I made mine, by removing it from the freezer, taking it out of the box and thawing it per the typed instructions of Mrs. Smith. Actually the whole meal was decent. Just like home cooking no meal will come out the same way or taste like a highly trained chef was in the kitchen overseeing things, unless of course it was the chef’s own home!

Well from start to finish the banquet lasted about 1 ½ hours and in three more hours the residents would be gathering back here for their final meal of the day, but not their final snack, carts went up and down the hallway to provide nutrition in the evening. Apparently if a resident started loosing weight it looked bad on the records so the aim was to fatten them up without consideration of the health risks; increased fat tissue leads to decreased muscle tone and mass, leading to dehydration, low immunity and from there the list is endless. As I pointed out early, nearly everyone was in a wheel chair so exercise was minimal and confined to upper body movements and leg kicks, that is if a resident chooses to attend the exercise class. The fear being if a resident fell because they were unsteady would lead to repercussions. Well, of course they are unsteady on their feet, if you don’t use it you loose it is not a lie it’s a pearl of wisdom.

After saying my good byes, going from table to table meeting new residents and hugging those I was already acquainted with, I noticed the staff gathering up leftovers. Most plates had been barely untouched and were heading to the garbage. The residents are offered so much to eat during the day and exert so little physical energy their appetites are non existent, they eat out of habit, probably coming to the dining room out of curiosity to see how the meal could be screwed up, visit with friends, or just to break the monotony. What a tremendous waste of food, the home should at least acquire a few trash compactors complete with four legs and wet noses, feeding them would be inexpensive and would bring great pleasure to the natives. I thought my plate was pretty good but my opinion wasn’t shared by all. I was a bad critic, this was better than my home cooking! And any mess I didn’t have to clean up got a gold star in my book.

The staff was now loading up the food carts for the bed bound who were fed last since they needed more assistance. Others just preferred eating in the quietness of their rooms in the company of their TV's, they didn’t care to socialize or watch others bath in the cuisine. The whole day for the kitchen staff really was spent preparing food, cooking and cleaning; also different from my home where plates and utensils went in the trash and store prepared food was simply nuked. Time consumed: five minutes tops.

Elaine escorted me to the exit, a little peeved that I had actually enjoyed my fare. As I wished her well until my next visit she recommended we make it a breakfast date. I groaned, now it would be home cooking before sunrise. Elaine explained the residents start filing in to their tables at four in the morning: I reiterate, what else have they got to do!