Right off the bat, I’ll say that I’m not the correct choice of person to tend the elderly, or maybe the young, or whoever . . . although I do seem to do OK working with Yellow Labs. I don’t have any patience, and I’ve got way too much A in my psyche to leave a befitting amount of space for compassion or . . . or . . . I can never remember the other one . . . empathy. I’m not certain what empathy is, other than that I’m told by my better half that as a lad, the empathy truck missed me on the way up the street.
Having said that, I do enjoy being company to my Mom and Dad. They are 86 and 90 respectively. They have good days and bad days, and my brother, two sisters, and I make the best of it. Today, I stopped at Sunset Estate to measure Mom’s chair for risers. I had a mission. Just after I got there, Dad asked if we could go shopping for long underwear, maybe new work boots, batteries for either his hearing aids or the big flashlight, the request flipped back and forth a couple of times, and to pick up his teeth . . . from somewhere. He had this all on a list that he held close to his chest, kind of like Maverick holds his poker hand.
The conversation went something like this:
Roger: “Where are your teeth?”
Dad: “At the plaza.”
Roger: “Which plaza?”
Dad: “I don’t care which plaza we go to, I’ve got to get my teeth.”
Roger: “So where are your teeth?”
Dad: “At the plaza?”
Roger: “Which plaza?”
Dad: “I don’t know which plaza. I need my teeth.”
I could see that I was going to miss a couple of meals if I didn’t get out of this loop, so I suggested we head toward Mark’s Work Warehouse, and maybe the whereabouts of the wayward teeth would present itself. What else could we do, with no phone number or address? We cruised Main St. like the police cruise King at 3am, looking in all of the store windows. As we were coming up to the Superstore plaza at Brookside, I asked if it might be in there, and he didn’t think so. We cruised onward. As we got near St. Mary’s Street, I suggested we go on up to Marks for long underwear and a new pair of work boots, and we did. They didn’t have the right undies, so we went to the Prospect St. Marks, then headed back to cruise Main again. He said it was on the right, but that would only make a difference if we knew which direction we should be heading. Both sides of the street can be “right”, right? We cruised in around the little plazas. No tooth fixer to be found. When we got back up near Brookside, I asked if it might be in there at the Superstore plaza. He said he didn’t know, but it may be worth a look. Blinky, blinky, and left we turned. He brightened up and said it looked somewhat familiar, then lo and behold, there it was, way over near the end where the Marriott call centre used to be. It was now after 4pm, and it was closed for the day. I had asked earlier if Brian (neighbour) had driven him there to drop the teeth for repair, and he answered no, he had driven there himself. (Insert big gasp here.)
In summary, got the boots, got undies, got D cells for the big flashlight, never heard about the hearing aids again, didn’t get the teeth, didn’t get the chair legs measured. All in all, we had a pleasurable afternoon.
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