When I go to go change into my uniform and begin my shift at the resthome, I bump into a (cheery) (Mexican) facilities worker and I ask her if she'll be celebrating Inauguration Day, but I can see that she probably doesn't know the word right after I say it, so I ask her if she'll be celebrating Biden and "no more Trump," at which she lights up and is all like, "Maybe!"
Later, when I see my one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker, I ask her about the Inauguration, but she seems uninterested, and then I follow up a few minutes later and she just shakes her head and says she doesn't know what's going to happen, that she heard that maybe Trump will flee to Mexico because the President there guaranteed his safety, and I ask her where she heard this, and she says that she saw a report on the news about a woman who predicts the future and is never wrong, and she said that.
Later, when I go to escort this one morose resident with a good sense of humor down in a wheelchair for a window visit with his daughter, I wait with him till she comes up with her husband who had ended up coming for the visit, too, and I speak loudly so they can hear and I'm like, "If your father's a problem, just signal, and I'll strangle him for you," and I make this big theatrical strangling gesture towards the one morose resident with a good sense of humor who's in his wheelchair next to me, and through the window the daughter is like, "Thanks, I will!"
Later, when I see the one (very kind) (Togolese) kitchen worker setting stuff up in the lounge-y type area on the first floor, I ask her if she's going to do anything for Biden being President, and she's like, "No, I wait one week, and then I celebrate."
Later, when I see my one (Chinese Filipina) coworker and my one (blocky) (older) (Tibetan) coworker, I ask them if they're glad to see Trump go, and my one (blocky) (older) (Tibetan) coworker is like, "He need go to hospital, correct his head," and she laughs at what she just said.
Later, when I see the one (quieter) (Mexican) maintenance guy, I ask him how he's going to celebrate Trump being gone, and he's like, "By working," and I'm like, "It's going to be so nice to wake up on Thursday on the first whole day with a new president," and he's like, "It's the truth."
Later, when I pop in to the room of the one retired school nurse to check on her, she's watching some livestreamed Yiddish concert, and she invites me to come sit and watch, and so I watch a few subtitled songs and try to understand Yiddish phrases, since Yiddish is a lot like German and I've been studying German vocabulary lately.
Later, when I pop in to check on the one resident who's always perky and plainspoken and who used to work as a cosmetics saleswoman, she's watching cable news and is like, "This president, we got to get rid of him, I say we string him up by his penis," which is something that she says every few shifts that I'm working and I come in on her watching cable news.
Later, I pop in to check on the one resident who moves very slowly, and after I get her set up for the evening, she asks me to get her a new book from a stack of library books that had gotten brought into her and were sitting on her couch, and I see a Danielle Steele book in there and since I know that she had just devoured another Danielle Steele book like a week ago, I pull that one out and I'm like, "Hey, there's a new Danielle Steele book here for you," and then she mentions that an activities office worker got her those, and then we both talk about what a good job that worker did.
Then, when at the very end of my shift and all of my work is done and I'm back in my street clothes and I'm sitting and waiting to clock out and I'm studying my hieroglyphics flashcards that I keep around with me in a very nice ziploc bag with a slide-lock, my one (Tibetan) coworker with an inappropriate sense of humor notices me and says that I never waste time and she asks me what I'm doing and I say that I'm studying Egyptian, and she seems surprised and I tell her that I've been doing that for like over a year now, and then she puts on that mocking tone of voice that she uses whenever she's joking with people and she's like, "[my first name], tell me what I should do with my long-term future," and I pause and think, and then I'm honestly like, "I don't know, the world is really f*cked up right now," and she was just about to take a sip from a paper cup of tea that she had just gotten, and I can see her in profile start to genuinely laugh when the cup is like an inch away from her mouth, and I can tell that she doesn't know what to say since I had genuinely gotten her and caught her off guard and she thought that what I said was funny, as well as being the truth.
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