{"id":567,"date":"2012-04-06T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T14:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningnewsinverse.com\/?p=567"},"modified":"2012-04-06T07:00:52","modified_gmt":"2012-04-06T14:00:52","slug":"dont-call-it-an-old-folks-home-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=567","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Call It ‘An Old Folks Home’ (Continued)"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Continued from April 3rd<\/sup> post)<\/em><\/p>\n

by Bob Sparrow<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The show begins.\u00a0 The entertainment was a husband-wife team in their 50s who had a Captain and Tennille\u00a0sort of vibe, except he played the keyboard more like a deckhand\u00a0than a captain and she, pardon the mixed metaphor, couldn\u2019t carry Toni Tennille\u2019s jock strap in a wet paper bag.\u00a0 I have no idea what that means. \u00a0Their repertoire included mostly Snoop Dog and Lady Gaga stuff.\u00a0 Oops, sorry, that was the music I had running through my iPod during their performance.\u00a0 Just kidding, I don\u2019t have any Snoop Dog.\u00a0 Actually they weren\u2019t bad, as they succeeded in keeping the audience awake, no small task, and on numerous occasions even had them \u2018gumming\u2019 the words to some old familiar songs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Several times during the course of their performance, mom would turn to \u2018New Jack\u2019 and start talking about various subjects, not in hush tones, but as if she had learned to whisper in a saw mill.\u00a0 A woman\u00a0sitting directly behind us, wanted of all things, to listen to the entertainment and not mom\u2019s \u2018whisperings\u2019 of sweet nothings into New Jack\u2019s hearing aid. After several room-filling, head-turning \u2018shhhhes\u2019, the woman\u00a0realized that mom was either ignoring her or hard of hearing, or both, so tapped me on the shoulder and nodded over to mom, using the now-familiar, non-verbal, face-contorting, silent language of seniors, that screamed, \u201cCan\u2019t you shut that old stove up?\u201d\u00a0 I shrugged and tried to give a non-verbal look that said, \u2018Welcome to my world.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The entertainment was really just the opening act for the main event \u2013 the crowning of the Merrill Gardens Valentines King and Queen.\u00a0 The room quieted as the hostess from \u2018god\u2019s waiting room\u2019 came before the group to announce this year\u2019s king and queen.\u00a0 \u00a0In a very officious way she explained that\u00a0the king and queen were voted\u00a0on by the residents and that the results had been sealed since yesterday noon, probably in a prunes jar.\u00a0 She paused dramatically and explained that this year\u2019s voting had a little twist \u2013 she would explain later.\u00a0 She announced the names of the king and queen.\u00a0 The new queen hurried to the front to be\u00a0crowned and explained that the king was in the restroom at the moment and would be out when he was good and ready.\u00a0 The hostess then explained that the voting was so close this year that they decided to crown a runner-up king and queen, which was unprecedented.\u00a0 She then called out, \u201cJack and Barbara\u201d \u2013 New Jack and mom!\u00a0 I leaned over and congratulated mom and whispered to her that as runner-up queen, should the 1st<\/sup>\u00a0queen, for whatever reason, be unable to perform her queenly duties, that she<\/em> would become queen!<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I must admit that soon after I heard my mom\u2019s named announced I had to restrain myself from jumping up and running around the room shrieking, \u201cI\u2019m a Prince, I\u2019m a Prince\u201d. Or would I be a duke?\u00a0 Whatever, I was inwardly thrilled with this brush with royalty.\u00a0 My enthusiasm dimmed however as I realized that while my sister would become a royal princess, my older brother would be the first in line of succession and as the middle child, I\u2019d be squeezed out again.\u00a0 After this realization, to be completely honest, I became secretly happy that my mom was only runner-up and muttered under my breath, \u201cLong live the queen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 After the show, mom, New Jack and I retired to mom\u2019s room.\u00a0 I knew my brother and sister were going to be\u00a0asking a lot of questions about New Jack, so I needed to get some information out of this guy.\u00a0 With the help of some light water-boarding and a flood light, the grilling began. \u00a0I learned that he was originally from West Virginia, but he seemed to have all his teeth and as far as I could tell did not play the banjo.\u00a0 He was a dentist for 30 years before moving to San Diego and getting into real estate where he apparently found that he could make more money with his hands in people\u2019s pocket than he could with his hands in their mouths.\u00a0 He came to Sonoma because his only child, a daughter, lives there.\u00a0 The daughter has three grown children, the most interesting of which is a son who lives in Taiwan and works for the US government.\u00a0 New Jack thinks he\u2019s a CIA spy of some kind; I think he\u2019s a ping-pong\u00a0table salesman.\u00a0 All and all, at the end of the interrogation, he seemed worthy of my mom\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This budding romance is the talk of Merrill Gardens, but will it last?\u00a0 We don\u2019t know whether to expect a call from \u2018New Jack\u2019 asking for our mother\u2019s arthritic hand in marriage or a call from mom saying that the \u2018Chicken Lady\u2019 is now saving his seat. \u00a0Time will tell.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Post Script: I have poked some fun at the elderly here, but I poke fun at everyone and I just didn\u2019t want to discriminate.\u00a0 Merrill Gardens does an excellent job of caring for their residents.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Continued from April 3rd post) by Bob Sparrow \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The show begins.\u00a0 The entertainment was a husband-wife team in their 50s who had a Captain and Tennille\u00a0sort of vibe, except he played the keyboard more like a deckhand\u00a0than a captain … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[119,453],"class_list":["post-567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-captain-tennille","tag-merrill-gardens"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-99","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}