#MajorsCorner #AssistedLiving #Humour

“The club hides behind the veneer of a Victorian graveyard, only looks twice as dead.” A visiting American friend once described us that way, and I would not disagree.
However it is a perfect cover for the seething cauldron that I and many of the mems know and love. We try never to let the floodlight of public censure blind us; the trick is to enjoy ourselves but be quiet about it. You might ask what could we possibly have to hide, just a group of old duffers reading and sleeping their way through the latter part of their lives, eh? Ha ha. We are alive and kicking, my friends, make no mistake about that.
Our main secret is that we are the underground railway for all escapes from the Up Island seniors’ home known as the Frightened Fawn. This is the place greedy families stick their elderly relatives after they have whined their way into obtaining the dreaded “power of attorney,” whereupon one club member’s sons said, “They check in but they don’t check out.” In effect, you are being sent away against your wishes, allowing your frightful children free rein amongst the safety deposit boxes.
And from the escapees one hears the most gruelling tales: No martinis, endless egg salad sandwiches and employee body odours that would raise eyebrows in a skunk den. It is not on as far as our membership is concerned.
The latest breakout occurred last week, when Mrs. Hynde-Quarters took tremendous umbrage to being incarcerated when she had only agreed to have a visit and a complimentary lunch to placate her pointy-nosed nephew. She was seized while watching a bridge game between a shackled foursome, then placed in a padded cell by several “assistants,” although she did manage to hospitalize one with a desperate blow to his testicles.
The next thing she knew she was being examined most intimately by what she referred to as some Freud devotee who blathered on about childhoods spent desiring one’s father. She was outraged as her father was General Hynde-Quarters, a soldier of impeccable character in spite of a predilection for losing many men through his blunders on the battlefield.
She made a break for it a week later during an elderly yoga class in which she was only nominally interested, sprinting through the gates dressed in some sort of one-piece white garb, which I am told she found much too binding.
Mrs. Hynde-Quarters shot into a bush not far from the high grey wall, where she ran into the One-Armed Colonel, also on the lam. He had on only an all-day diaper and was terribly embarrassed. They both looked away. The club truck picked them up on the route it takes by the FF every night on the off chance of a break-out. They are in two rooms at the top of the landing recovering slowly.
How can families do this to their former loved ones? Money. They have the right through power of attorney to do almost anything they want. At the club we have raised a fund to help these poor people find an alternative just as if they were retired zoo animals. Unfortunately, unlike the animals, which are sent to warmer climes, our inmates have only one place, the Yukon, at the Old Mittens home, so this option is exercised very rarely.
Good news today, an obscure nephew of Mrs. Hynde-Quarters who is a lawyer with no convictions against him, has had her son’s power of attorney revoked and she is once again able to frolic freely. However the One-Armed Colonel has no such saviour and must remain an unhappy guest of the club until further notice. We dress him up as a waiter, but he keeps dropping things so we need a new plan on that aspect. He does, however, have sanctuary as long as he stays inside the home of homes. There are impatient men in white trousers on the club lawn waiting for him.
Because of all this to-do, I have taken to carefully scrutinizing my relatives, including my ungrateful children, in particular Ackroyd, my third son, the one with a pumpkin for an Adam’s apple. He never amounted to much, as he takes after my wife’s brother, who drinks and carouses his life away and steals us blind every chance he gets.
Anyway I have noticed of late my son carrying books on law about the place as he still lives in our basement at the age of 40, which I take to be an act of war. The word might be out concerning my future, for even the cats pay more attention to Ackroyd than to the head of the family, namely, me. Also our cook now treats me in a half-hearted way. I distinctly asked for eggs over easy, and I got scrambled instead. What a cheek!
It does not augur well for me. On this Kitty and I are a team, for she knows she too could be next. We are off to see our lawyer, Jimmy “Here’s My Bill” Tort, next week to talk about power of attorney and all that.
Be careful, my friends, as there are a great number of wolves in sheep’s clothing out there, some very close to you. I don’t want to end up dressed as a waiter, do you?
Copyright Christopher Dalton 2015.