Hangin with the Feebles and the Geries in the Home

January 10, 2006 - 11:07 a.m.

I went out East for the holidays, to Philadelphia, New York City, and a few days hanging out with my grandpa in small-town Pennsylvania.

My grandpa lives in a Mennonite nursing home, which is where the Amish go when they can no longer hitch a horse to a buggy or churn their own butter. It’s the cutest place I’ve ever been in my life. When is the last time you interacted with elderly people? I mean, like a hundred of them, surrounding you, admiring your beauty and bowel control? They were adorable, the ladies still wearing their head coverings and the dining area is separated by sex, unless you are married. In other words, there are boys’ tables and there are girls’ tables, and there are married tables. These people don’t have two teeth to rub together, but still there’s a rule that non-marrieds shall not fraternize together, because why? They might have sex or something? Ummm, doubtful.

This is not helping grandpa’s pursuit of finding a girlfriend.

I sat at a table and politely answered questions from the old folks and I found I was having a hard time connecting with Henry, who sat across from me and was a thousand years old if he was a day. It seemed that whenever I would look at him to listen to him speak my eyes would see something unsavory and quickly avert before my brain could get the message. This is a fairly common occurrence, as my eyes and brain have a deal where The Eyes vow not to let The Brain “see” things that are horrific, to prevent The Face from betraying The Thoughts, because The Thoughts reveal Horror, Disgust and all of the fillings in the back of my mouth.

The Brain was getting pretty curious as to what the hell was so wrong with Henry and ordered The Eyes to stare at Henry until The Thoughts could figure it all out. Then The Brain quickly apologized to The Eyes and said, “Sorry, you were right. I’ll never ask again” because Henry had an eyeball hanging out of its socket. I don’t know how else to explain it other than that. It wasn’t dangling exactly, or swinging like a pendulum or anything. But he was terribly disfigured and his blind, milky-blue eye sat atop his cheek bone. It was no longer almond-shaped, or even round for that matter, but more flat, distorted, runny, and come to think of it, looking very much like a sunny side-up egg in a Salvador Dali painting.

Oh, Henry. Mr. Quasimodo. Mr. Stared Directly at The Lost Ark.

My life would be one long anxiety attack if I could see and feel that my face was sliding off. I would forever be hallucinating that my eye was slipping lower and lower, and no doubt I would be convinced it was creeping around the side of my mouth, heading towards my chin.

Later that day my grandpa asked me if I would teach him “computers”. Even though computers have been in common household use for 25 years, and the internet for more than ten, he decides at the age of 87, that right now he needs to learn “computers”. I will now humbly accept my nomination for Nobel Peace Prize. Because teaching an old man what a mouse is, and Windows, and the internet and web addresses and to not keep clicking on the same thing over and over again because it did not immediately respond to you is the job of a Saint, or someone with the patience of one. That is, apparently, me.

And it’s not that gramps is a Feeb; his mind is very sharp and he only has minimal signs of memory loss. But let’s not forget that not only is he about 75% blind, and 60% deaf, he lost most of his fingers to bandsaws over the years. So imagine maneuvering a mouse when you have no thumb and only half of an index finger. (I think when I Photoshopped his hands in that previous entry, I mixed up a couple of the fingers, because now I’m certain that he is missing his right index finger). The old man just could not grab hold of a scroll bar if his life depended on it. He was practically barking at the monitor, “Good! Golly! Go on! Get it!” And because it was a cheap-ass nursing home computer, it had no wheel on the mouse, and the space bar was stiff and this made my job (and his) all the more difficult.

I sat there with him for hours, downing a half liter of Coke, while he composed his first Yahoo email. This is someone who has never worked in an office, was never a secretary, and never had much use for a typewriter. So here he is, learning to type as an octogenarian, with less than a handful (ha) of fingers. He’s pecking away for quite some time, his face deep in thought as he composes a beautifully well-thought letter, and when he’s all done he looks up, and all of his words are gibberish. It seems he wasn’t hitting the keys hard enough (cheap-ass keyboard) and the words made no sense. He let out a deep sigh of disappointment because he thought it was his fault the words didn’t come out and that maybe he was losing his mind and forgetting to spell. Aw hell. I had to jump in and fix it, and clarify that it was indeed a beautiful sunny day, praise the lord, and my granddaughter is here teaching me computers.

Halfway through our lesson I had sneaked away for a few minutes and called a couple of relatives, asking them to send him emails at his brand-new email address. So the whole time I was teaching him, new emails were coming in, like family news, pictures and jokes. He got all excited: “Will you look at that? Another one just came in!” Boy did he feel special. All of a sudden he was instantly connected to his family who live hundreds of miles away, he was in the loop, and no longer isolated in his nursing home.

But I think this mislead him to believe that the very act of being online somehow invites emails to come in, popping up one after another. I hope he isn’t disappointed next time he logs in. But I told everyone to start cc:’ing him with any family related emails so at this point he is probably receiving more email than I do.

Octogenarian vs. Sexy Young Red-Haired Granddaughter? Grandpa wins this popularity contest, hands down.

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