Dementia-face!

 

I was visiting my brother and sister-in-law while they had a friend over. This friend was a Senior Practice Management Strategist at one of those investment firms. Every article of his clothing had its own advisor. His cuff links received more money in dividends quarterly, in three months, than I saw in three years. He was pretty well off, to say the least, and he had no problem letting everyone know, even my sister-in-law’s 70-year-old father. Her father had been suffering from dementia for four years. The dementia was compounded by high blood pressure, diabetes and the lack of care he received at the previous nursing home where he was interred, I mean accepted too. The kind of nursing home that hopes you call before you come to visit your parent so the staff can clean your parent and the room.

He attempted to offer the guest some soda, soda they didn’t have because neither my brother nor his wife drinks soda, but the guest briskly waved the elderly man away, claiming that soda had too many calories and, unlike the old man, he was trying to lose fat.

Needless to say, her father was offended, even if he didn’t understand why. He abruptly left the gathering and went upstairs. The rest of us laughed and laughed and laughed until we noticed the old man return to the gathering wearing one of his old suits. The gerund “wearing” is doing a lot of work. Months of the nursing home's starvation diet resulted in a skeletal man who appeared to have completed a marathon across the Sahara Desert. The suit was clearly wearing him. And yet he waltzed into the room with all of the finesse of someone whose cufflinks received more in dividends than the balance of my student loans.

He proceeded to mimic my brothers’ wealthy friend. His vocabulary was biting and swift; his propensity to mock had the gravitas of a Patagotitan mayorum debating an Argentinosaurus the metaphysical presuppositions of Malebranche’s attempt at a synthesis between Descartes and St. Augustine atop Mouth Everest. He sat next to the guest, imitating the guest's many mannerisms, from the confident way he flailed his arms and eyebrows to the very nonchalant way he’d scratch his ass thinking no one could see him. We were as amazed at her father’s performance as we were with the fact that he made it down the stairs without falling.

The wealthy friend was not amused. Midway through the old man’s act, the guest stood up and said, “How would you like it if I put on a diaper and started spouting gibberish? Huh!”

The old man said nothing as he smirked. He then proceeded to laugh, as did we all, well, every but the guest. In that moment, the guest parted my brother’s house, only to return an hour later after my sister-in-law put her father to bed.

The wealthy friend strutted through the front door in nothing but an adult diaper and the powerfully overwhelming scent of feces, saying, “Gabba, gabba, I make poopy! Is this funny? Am I funny? Gabba gabba, change me! Ohh! Where are my pants? Change me! I’m old!”

Through the laughter, we asked him why he did this; he replied simply: “He started it!”

When we finished laughing at this man offended by a 70-year-old man with dementia, we asked him to leave and to seek help from a professional.