Monthly Archives: July 2025

What Went on at the Nursing Home?

etc., fun and games, health, humor, television, ,

Well, to me it was post-acute rehab care, but there were long-term and memory units, so let’s call it a nursing home. I was there for about a month and a half recovering from complications of my knee replacement.

When I checked in, the first person I met was my roommate, a 90-year-old woman named Norma. I’m not sure what she was in the home for. What I did know was that James Arness was her secret love crush. I know this because she kept Gunsmoke playing on the room’s TV eight or more hours per day. Being the newcomer to the room and being over 20 years younger, I didn’t feel I should offer to arm wrestle the remote away from her.

(I was equipped, however. I had my phone, complete with Nook, Kindle, Facebook, and Pandora, complete with a charging cable and a pair of earbuds. I was set. When Norma left to stay with relatives, I had an essentially single room and complete control of the remote. But I digress.)

For those who didn’t choose to stay in their rooms watching TV, there were lots of activities, starting most days with a coffee hour and Wii bowling. Throughout the week, there were concerts, Bible stories, card games, trivia sessions, karaoke, cooking classes, and movie-and-popcorn days. There was a beauty salon for appointments, and one week, even a prom.

I mostly stuck with my phone and its assorted diversions, as well as non-Gunsmoke TV. (The one time I went to a “Family Feud”-style contest, the talk devolved into politics, and I bowed out. And I never even went to my own prom, so theirs didn’t appeal to me, at least. But I digress again.)

Another diversion for me was the age-old sport of door-staring. The restroom and room doors were made of wood, and I could spend endless time staring at them and identifying shapes I could see. There was one spot that looked like a spy peeking through a crack, or if you looked at it another way, a surly baby. Then there was one area that looked like the Virgin Mary or the Dr. Who that my husband likes (the one with the long scarf), only with a coat hook for a head. (Technically, this activity is known as pareidolia, which is a fun fact to know and tell. If you can pronounce it, that is. But I digress yet again.)

It was also fun to collect names. That is, to see how many different ways the staff referred to you. Most of the time, I was called Miss Janet or Mrs. Coburn (both of which are inaccurate), but I was also called Babe, Hon, Sweetie, and even Girlfriend. The woman in the next room was called Chiquita, which I never was.

(I’ve heard this described as “infantilizing” nursing home residents by using endearments instead of their real names. My mother told me that at one place she stayed, there was a woman who had a Ph.D. When she needed help, she would stand in the doorway and shout “Yoo-hoo.” I don’t know what the staff actually called her, but ever after, I thought of her as Dr. Yoo-hoo. But I digress some more.)

The staff had games of their own. They would hide little cutout figures of ducks or gnomes (or something) around the facility and see who could collect them all first. It was entertaining to see the nurses and aides careening down the corridors, laughing and squealing as they searched for the numbered items.

Another pleasant distraction was the little ice cream cart that the staff took around. I couldn’t have any because of my diet, but Dan was there once when it came around and scored himself a root beer float. Most of the time when Dan visited, we held hands and watched reruns of Star Trek.

To me, that was the most fun in the nursing home.

Hooked on Scrolling

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Back in the day, my husband used to bitch about how people were glued to their phones at all times—even while walking somewhere. “How can they see where they’re going?” he’d ask. “What if they don’t see a car and it hits them?”

I’ll bet you can see where this is going. Now Dan is as much of a cellphone addict as the people he used to look down on.

He has a history of finding changes in technology unwelcome. He didn’t even want to get a regular cellphone in the first place. It was only after a protracted argument caused by one of us not notifying the other where they were and when they’d be home. I pointed out that this would not be a problem if we had phones we could carry around with us and not rely on a landline.

Finally, he began to see it my way and caved. I purchased inexpensive cellphones and gave him one. It was the kind with almost no features or difficult-to-access ones. (To be honest, it was the kind that parents are now encouraged to get for their kids. Like that would go over big and occasion bliss. No internet connection? No social media? They’d sooner just leave it in the box. But I digress.)

The low-ball cellphones we got worked okay, except for one tiny problem—Dan kept losing them. Not once or twice, mind you, but regularly. Once he even lost it in another state. (My dad would have said, “I’m going to tie it on a string around your neck so you won’t lose it.” His dad would have said, “If it was up your ass, you’d know where it was.” But I digress some more.) But even when he lost each flip-phone he insisted on replacing it with another just like it.

The problem only got worse when I bought a smartphone for myself. Dan refused to give up his rickety flip-phone. He did marvel at the many things I could do with the smartphone, like play Puss-in-Boots Fruit Ninja or get directions to the sushi place nearest to our hotel.

What changed his mind was advances in technology. When he heard that 5G was on the horizon and the flip-phone would flip its lid in fear, he consented to me selecting him a smartphone. A simple one. It should do as little as possible except make and accept phone calls. No Fruit Ninja for him.

Soon, however, he discovered that with it, he could get online. He had a computer and was used to the wonders he could find on the Web. (Web-wonders, as it were.) Mostly, he read the news, checked the weather, and watched YouTube videos of cute kitties, which, after all, was why Al Gore (or that guy with the series of tubes) invented the Internet.

Soon he was scrolling regularly. (It strikes me as ironic that scrolls were a very early form of communication, but now the word as well as the world has gone high-tech. But I digress yet again.)

Singer-songwriter Tom Paxton once wrote, “The news is all bad, but it’s good for a laugh.” Now that even the news isn’t good for a laugh, Dan has increased his intake of cat videos and stories about archaeology. And sworn off doomscrolling.