Golden Oldies

Some days, my senior citizen volunteers drive me batty. And by some I mean all. Take, for example, Priscilla; while she is legally considered deaf, she almost always refuses to wear her hearing aid because, she says, "when it's cold outside, it freezes to her ears". And while she does make an interesting conversationalist (Me: "Priscilla, could you put these books back on the shelves?" Priscilla: "Pardon? The library is infested with elves?"), her constant shuffling about grates on my brain. It's like she's unable to pick up her feet to move around, so it's a steady tssssh tssssh tssssh across the library carpet all day long. All I can imagine is that she must give herself some whopping static electricity shocks.

Then there's Edna, who must be in her mid-nineties and no longer drives, nor does she have any remaining family that cares about whether their old mother dies walking in the sub-Arctic temps lives near enough to cart her around. When she talks, she can't focus very well on you and so she creeps closer and closer to your face until you can see her pink rose Wet 'n Wild lipstick smeared clownishly around her mouth, teeth, and gumline. She also has trouble hearing, but with her I'm not so worried about it because it doesn't actually matter whether she hears me or not, she probably won't be able to do whatever I'm asking of her. She can't bend down, nor can she reach up, nor can she walk more than a few steps without needing a rest. So I basically have her sit and stamp things. What things? Just... things.

There's also Polly*, who recently decided that she was interested in learning about computers but is one of those very rare people who actually can break a computer just by looking at it. Seriously, she needs her own episode of Heroes. I stepped away from my computer to take a bathroom break and when I came back I had to fill out three work order forms with the Technology department because she had somehow broken my mouse, keyboard, and barcode scanner in one fell swoop.

Why don't I just trade them in for newer models, you ask? I'd say 10% of it is because it would be more work to have them stop coming in than it is for me to just endure their presence, 10% because they have interesting stories of illness and gossip (they're better than a town crier), and the other 80% is because I feel bad for them. Besides, if I wait a few years they'll all be gone anyway, right?

Right?


*All names are real. Seriously, they're old.