On Wednesday, Joanna and I took our grandmother to the dentist. This sounds benign, doesn't it? Even dull? Then why after every trip to this office, are Joanna and myself filled with the kind of white hot rage only seen in Vietnam movies?
Let's be honest, taking a 90 year old woman anywhere is painful. I appreciate the fact that the elderly move at a much slower pace than we do, but sometimes it seems like it would be easier to just put her in a baby bjorn and carry her around like a baby kangaroo.
But nobody takes my suggestions, so instead, our grandmother uses a walker; A big red cumbersome beast from Hell that hinders more than it helps. A process that should take 5 minutes takes an hour. We live in a very fast paced time, and it's jarring to have to slow to a crawl when we are with our grandmother.
Joanna and I are not at all fond of this "dentist." He reminds me of the dentist from "Little Shop of Horrors" only not as warm and kind. Granny was to only have one cavity filled, so imagine our surprise when he came out and told us that he basically decided "fuck it, let's just yank the sucker." He of course said that in a more delicate manner, but the meaning was the same.
We were in that terrible waiting room with it's terrible radio station for an hour and a half, so we should have figured he was up to something. This guy has that effect on my grandmother, the effect all men have on her; basically, she will just do whatever they say.
This is a common trend for her generation. My grandmother doesn't trust women, and she especially doesn't trust women dentists. That's why we have to drive a ridiculous distance to take her to this particular dentist, instead of the woman right down the street. Ironically enough, the woman dentist actually ran over her own grandmother with her car "accidentally", so maybe granny is right not to trust her. It would just be SO much more convenient...
Back to the rage. I'm not sure where it is our impatience comes from-it might be the fact we live in a world of instant gratification; everything is fast and concise and speedy. The english language has been abandoned in favor of letters representing words, and everything is "140 character or less." This isn't a good mindset when dealing with the elderly.
We DO need more patience and the mixed feelings of anger and guilt tend to offset that need in favor of the need for a drink. We yell at them because they are too slow, then feel guilty about it. Joanna and I have started to try to look at the humor and irony of it all. We try to laugh instead of yell. This hasn't really been working thus far, but at least it provides a strong argument for the legalization of marijuana. If people were to smoke pot before taking granny to the doctor, everything she said would be fucking hilarious.
-Kat
I feel like I've learned something today; Without the old people of the world to slow us down, this life would be a little too fast paced.. I mean, maybe it's good to sit at a crosswalk for 10 minutes waiting for old man Stevenson to "Gumby" his way across the street every now and then.. It allows us to stop and take a look around at all the robberies, rapings and stabbings that happen here lately! Either way, as easy as it would be to simply place large amounts rat poison in all of the Werther's Original bags--ridding the world of these creatures, they have a place here too! Besides, if no one was old enough to need walkers, what would we do with all of the old and busted tennis balls of the world?
ReplyDelete-mike