More tales of the farm... funny farm, that is...

My mother informed me last night that her car had broken down (yet again), and that she had to get up at 3:30 to leave for work by 4:30; and so I should be quiet when I got home. Since she had no car, Dad was the lucky prize winner who got to take her to work... at 4:30 AM. Apparently she had to be to work at 5:30. What kind of irrational idiot schedules people to work at such an ungodly hour? My mom works at a catalogue company; they take orders for kid's toys. I don't think I want to meet the person who has the energy to call and order TOYS at 6 o'clock in the morning! People who are cheery and energetic that early in the morning need to be slapped. Okay; Perhaps its not the most Christian or charitable thought to have in one's head, but I'll use the age-old excuse that none of us are perfect. :P

But back to the story... Dad had to get up at yea-dark-thirty, and I was happily oblivious to all of it, and quite forgot about all of it until my mother called me at work to inform me that Dad had picked HER up from work, and now she was taking HIM to work; however, he would need to be picked up from work.

He works only a few blocks from where I work; that wasn't the problem. The problem was for Dad who got off work at 10 pm, and I didn't finish my shift until 11 pm. Which meant he had to wait an hour.

Mom explained all this carefully to me. But, she went on to explain, she didn't' want to waste an hour to pick him up and come back again, so, since I was going that way anyway...

Then, as an afterthought, she quickly added that it would save on gas as well. Well, you can't argue with that, can you? So my poor dad had to wait an hour for me. I put a huge memo on the white board, so that I wouldn't forget to pick him up. He called my cell phone anyway, just to make sure. :P What me? Forget something? Never...

Anyway, when I arrived at his workplace (he's a CNA at a Nursing Home), I was horrified to see a poor old man sitting all alone in a wheelchair, with no one around to attend to him. Too weak to keep his head up, he leaned forward, his head sagging, as he tried feebly to hold it up with his hand. I was outraged! What kind of place was this?

Wait a minute, there was something oddly familiar about that balding head drooping forward. *sigh* It was my FATHER, who's head was drooping because he was, in fact, sleeping. I couldn't get his attention, so I called HIS cell phone, and when he answered, I told him to watch out, or they'd take him away; he looked pretty convincing. He looked up to see me standing outside the doors, shivering, and grinned sheepishly.

So when he got into the car, I asked him: "So Dad, why were you sitting in the wheelchair when you could have rested on the couch in the Lobby?"

"Oh, if I had sat on the couches, I couldn't have seen you pull up," he said.

I stared at him; but it was dark, so he couldn't tell. "Dad, you were fast asleep. You're lucky an orderly didn't' think you were a patient and wheel you away. You certainly didn't notice when I pulled up or banged on the doors..."

Dad cleared his throat and said, "Oh well, I must have been more tired than I thought."

On the way home, he dozed on and off, and I silently thanked God that I was, in fact, driving; perhaps it was good, that on this day, my parents had only one car between them.

But this is my dad; he thinks he's Superman, and thinks he has to do everything. When we got home, I was getting things together in my car to take inside, and I looked over and he was bent under the hood of Mom's car, peering intently at the beast within with a flashlight.

With a look of incredulity, I told him to go to bed. I thought he was tired... it must have been the power nap he got in the wheelchair. Oh well, I convinced him to go to bed; it wasn't too hard.

And speaking of going to bed... I should be there myself. Ciao!