renée audubon
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Face Flicker

2/2/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Let's call this fiction. 

Within 30m of watching a required training video about elder abuse and neglect as part of my volunteer training at a senior center, I witnessed elder abuse and neglect. The "face flicker," as I'm now calling this employee, has been around for awhile (#queenbee). I noticed right away that the residents, mostly wheelchair bound, avoid eye contact with her. 

No wonder. 

Just before it happened, I was chatting up Tina (we'll call her), a highly entertaining conversationalist resident who repeats herself a lot (early dementia) and likes to talk inappropriately about the sex she had in high school. She's not obscene, and rather funny. She tells jokes about the nuns and the stories her older sisters used to tell her to avoid predicaments. "They told me to tell the boys that if they take it out, they will catch a cold!" She has a great laugh. Tina had repeated that particular one-liner several times (I laughed every time) when the face flicker stood over her wheelchair and flicked her face with her index finder. Off the thumb, like we did in second grade.

"Don't use that voice," was the admonishment accompanying the corporal punishment.

Formerly feisty, animated Tina, crestfallen, looked down and away. Blinked in slow motion.

And indeed stopped using her voice for the remaining rounds of Bingo that day.

Silenced. Shamed. Abused.

In a wheelchair. 



(They scheduled the wrong volunteer that day. I made a plan.) 


0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Here, I am a writer and change agent. Opinions: not vetted. Stories: my own. 

    Archives

    February 2025
    August 2024
    April 2024
    May 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly