A Senior Moment

Little kids or old people—those were my choices. I wanted to stay home and watch television but my dad thought I should do some volunteer work. He thought it would help me develop character, whatever that means. So I flipped a coin. I got old people. So my dad signed me up to go two afternoons a week to Wesley Nursing Home over on Tenth Street. My job was to read to people who couldn’t see so good or to play cards with them or whatever they wanted. I didn’t care.

A whole bunch of kids were signed up to do this. We had to go to a meeting before our first session with the old folks. I saw quite a few kids I knew from school. I’m new to the neighborhood so I don’t know  very many people. We moved here last winter so I didn’t get to meet everybody in the fall like everybody else.

I learned a lot at the meeting. Like how to talk to old people. You shouldn’t yell at them because their not all deaf. And just because they dont move around so good doesn’t mean theyre stupid so don’t talk down to them either. These things made sense to me. I learned a lot.

So this girl Jenny and me were put together to work as partners the first day. We played cards with two older ladies named Doris and Mrs. Larson. Mrs. Larson didn’t want us to call her by her first name. After all we were just kids. First we played hearts which is pretty easy. Then Mrs. Larson asked us if we wanted to learn a new game called bridge. Well it was new to me and Jenny. We said sure and so Mrs. Larson started to teach us. She warned us that we had to be good at math. Turns out Jenny is the best kid in math at our whole school. I didn’t know that even though we were in the same math class. I guess maybe I am in the math class for smart kids.

Anyway, we played bridge all afternoon. It’s a tough game. Mrs. L as we started to call her seemed maybe a little bit impressed that we could keep up with her. Doris and her were lots of fun.

So I decided I would keep going to the senior center because it turns out that older people can be kind of fun. they may not know about hip-hop or watch cool shows on tv but they are ok. I never really thought about that before because my dad and I live so far away from my grandparents.