"We understand you," said Mom to me.
"I hope so," I replied.
"But you have to understand us, as well. Choose the right words."
Well, duh! I've had to deal with that for the last two decades plus! It seems she didn't tire of saying the same old recycled advice that Mary Schmick hinted at in a column that Baz Lurhmann glorified a decade or so ago.
"Well, I congratulated him on finding his keys. Isn't that enough?"
"But it's too late. He doesn't need it."
"Okay, then I take back the congratulatory remark, and replace it with, 'Note to self: your key is in your compartment. You should have shook your head and kicked yourself for not looking for it there first.'"
That's where he found it. Four hours after the search began, sacrificing a buffet run to Hokkaido, on Cherry and Spring.
I'm happy for Dad. He is, once again, able to do what he does best: accommodate to those living in the mad house that is Intercommunity Care Center in Signal Hill. Too bad he interpreted the reminder as an insult. And it's a bummer that of all the places he didn't look for first, one of them just had to be that compartment of his.
It's a bummer to be senile, innit? In my dictionary, it's the same as old. Well, I can sympathize, because, sometimes, I don't look in the places I am most familiar with first when looking for something important. It happens.
And then we go off and fantasize about what we think SHOULD have happened, losing our touch with reality for a few idle minutes. I've observed this for a while, and it's a cycle. It happens every day in this house. Sometimes it's flat out fun to watch from a distance. Sometimes, the rationale would make the audience boo with disgust, as if it were a sitcom gone wrong.
But it makes people think about how good times, followed by bad, followed by good, alternate with each other. It's the Yin-Yang, the balancing act, that mystique that is the Bedlam.