They'll shoot your eye out!
My mother was on the phone today talking about her cousin in California who is getting old, and we know with what comes with getting old. Yeah. Well, it made me think about this guy I used to know. When I was in eleventh grade, I got caught smoking weed, and on top of my demoted status, living arrangements, losing my job, and my ten day suspension, I had 50 hours of community service to do! They don't mess around at therapeutic boarding school. Well, I chose to go work at the local nursing home, and I was lucky enough to get partnered up with a great man named George. It turned out that I really was lucky, because he was the only person in the entire joint who could hold a conversation, and could he ever! We would talk about the craziest shit, the things he'd seen and experienced, and stories about the people he had loved. He taught me about Catheters, Normandy, Count Bassie, and the perfect summer day. George was at the home because he was blind, and had some really bad physical complications from diabetes, but other than that he was ready and raring to go. I would go hang out with George four times a week for 2 or 3 hours, and we were always engaged in intense and also very humorous conversation. I kept visiting George, even after I'd finished my required time (there was a regular trip to the place because some amount of kids always had community service hours to take care of), but once I got into my senior year, I was working two jobs and I really didn't have the free time anymore. When I went to visit him for the last time, I brought him an audio book of that Mitch Albom book, Tuesdays With Morrie. It was a very appropriate book for the situation, just believe me if you've yet to read it. It's a great book though, on top of being appropriate that is. I wondered how he was doing, if he was still alive even. I mean, how long do people live at nursing homes for anyway? It made me sad, but I hope he's rasin' hell somewhere in Connecticut right now.