Knock, Knock

To conclude this mini-series on Fun With the Elderly, I have my own stories from a few years back when I was Middle Child's Girl Scout leader. We used to take the troop to a local retirement home for planned activities.

During the holidays one year, the girls sang Christmas carols and played their respective instruments for the residents. We also had a bingo session planned. The activity director at the facility had told me how much the old folks enjoyed Starlight Mints and suggested we use them as the bingo chips. I went out and bought a bunch of the 79 cent bags, along with some tins of Christmas cookies.

After the musical portion of our day, the girls handed out the bingo cards to tables of 4 (3 residents/1 girl scout) and I walked around and deposited handfuls of the wrapped candies in the middle of each table. Just as I was about to start calling out numbers, one of my scouts came up and whispered in my ear, "We don't have any of the candy bingo markers at our table." I was confused as I was certain I hadn't missed a table. That's when she said, "A lady at our table took all the candy and put it in her purse!" If that wasn't bad enough, I found out that the elderly take their bingo game very seriously. I made a huge error in not having prizes for the winners. Every single time someone yelled "Bingo!" their next question was, "What did I win?" Try explaining that you are just playing "for fun" to a group of 80 year olds!

Another time, we went near Easter to help the residents make foam door hangers. The scouts had fun helping them glue on bunnies and the like and many of the residents wanted the girls to write their names for them because their hands were too shaky. Midway through the craft, an elderly gentleman came strolling in, wondering what we were doing. One of the old ladies was like, "Fred........we're making door hangers; come sit down and make one with us." To which Fred replied, loud and clear for all the world to hear, "I'll give you something to hang that door hanger on!"

My fellow troop leader and I had to leave the room for a good 10 minutes until we were able to compose ourselves. To this day, whenever we run into each other, we quote Fred.