A playful resthome resident.

One of the resthome residents is this short and well-dressed distinguished-looking guy who's a hundred and one years old, and he displays dementia and has lost much of his verbal capacity, but a lot of the time he can be quite quick-witted and playful, non-verbally.

For example, I have to walk with him and escort him to and from the dining room, and one day when he was one of the last ones out, I was a bit ahead of him and so I turned around and walked backward, just to f*ck with him.

He was amused by that, and then all of a sudden he stopped and mugged looking around me, like something was coming up behind me and like I was going to trip and fall and get hurt somehow.

LOL.

Another day, he was eating slow too, and I had escorted the other residents who I was supposed to assist that day back to their rooms, and I came back to get him, and he was still at his table, leisurely drinking coffee.

He had been folding a (cloth) napkin, so I took another one and carefully folded it into ever smaller triangles, until you couldn't fold it any more, it was so fat.

Then, next thing I know, he takes that napkin, fiddles with it and with his, and all of a sudden he's holding both of them up in front of me as two overlapping napkins, one pointing up and one pointing down, and together they form the Star of David, and he's chuckling gleefully.

So, after he set those down, I took the two napkins, unfolded them one time, put them together again, and held up an even bigger Star of David in front of him, which made him laugh again.

Then, I put the napkins down, and when I went to unfold them another time to get even bigger triangles, he laughed pretty hard, and was like, "Oh boy!"

One time, too, I was assisting him in this short hallway with a cement floor, and my one (male) (Tibetan) coworker was passing by, so he stopped to say hello for a bit, and when the older gentleman was walking by this one stain on the cement, my coworker pointed to it and was like, "Hey [his first name], did you do that, did you do that?!".

At that, the resident paused, took his hands off the walker and turned, and mimicked like he was waving his dick and pissing on the floor.

At that, they both chuckled, and my coworker then explained to me that one time the resident had gotten confused and he had thoughten that he had pissed on the floor when he had seen that, so they both go and joke about that now.

That gave me the idea of more risque humor with him, so that very same day when I took that one resident into the dining room, there's these little round half-dome plastic lids where the kitchen workers set out sample plates of what's being served that day.

Me and him have joked with those before, where one time they were both empty and I gestured to them both like something was there, and he paused like he was thinking them over and deciding between them before pointing to one of them and being like, "I'll have that one."

Also, another time I took them and clapped them both together in front of me like I was some monkey at the circus or with some organ grinder, and still another time I took one and held it up like a bell and I struck it and made bell sounds like "BONNNNGGGG," at which he pulled out his backscratcher from his bag on his walker and went to go strike it like he was hitting a bell.

Anyhow, this time I took the two round half-dome plastic lids by their little handles on top. and I put them against my chest like I had breasts.

He paused and laughed, and then he paused and made his eyes go half shut and he stuck his tongue out and shook his head back and forth, as if his head was between two breasts, and he was going crazy licking them.

LOL.

I didn't quite expect that reaction.

It goes to show you, dementia can change people's capacities, but people are themselves just the same.