This next story from the Life and Times of Sherrena is a part two from the last post….I think I will call it chapter two instead….I want to say I miss the two guys in the story something awful but the memory I have of them is almost as grand as they themselves had been… I wish I could have used their real names but I got as close as one could get….

Ned Peterson had been a sailor back in the 40‘s... He told me he had been so enraged at what had happened at Pearl Harbor that he felt compelled to in list… He sat there in his wheel chair looking at me with his one good eye and his face wrinkled with age… I had been his nurse’s aide for 9 months before this day and he had told me about a lot of things…. but none held my attention more than when he talked about the War… He had sailed to every where!…. And he was good at telling a story…When he told me about the places he had seen I saw it in my mind as well…. “What’d ya say ya name was?”…. He asked me as he watched me make his bed… “Sherrena.” I answered….. “Shrimp???… Who ever heard of naming there kid Shrimp?!”… “No Sir… I said Sherrena.”… We went through this every day. He never knew who I was or anyone else for that matter but he never forgot his stories… Never!…. And never were they told with anger or bitterness over the hardships he had endured… I sat there riveted on the end of his bed on several nights listening to him tell of the war ship he had sailed on and the cannons firing…(BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!).... How every man had a job and how every man did it! How he had come home from the war to a baby that looked nothing like him…. But his duty had been to his country and he excepted the draw backs from it….( that baby grew up to come visit him every other Friday and even though he asked her who she was every time, she continued to return )… I listened as he told of how he thought his wife would out live him…. But he had been wrong… He remembered that she had died twenty years earlier….. To bad his recall of that couldn’t have been forgotten… His friend was Benny Lane… He too had been in the Military and I suggested one day that those two fella’s aught to share a room…. Benny’s wife thought this a good idea because her husband too was full of war stories and she had heard Mr. Peterson tell a few of his own…. So that’s when the Popcorn parties started…. Benny’s wife brought an old VCR and we hooked it up to Benny’s TV…. Mr. Peterson told me four times to back up! I was fixing’ to get the “shock of ma damn life”… But I finally got it hooked up… I put in the tape and I saw John Wayne all decked out in a military uniform… (Man did he look snazzy)…. I went and popped those guys some pop corn and from then on out ever Friday night was movie night… Mr. Peterson changed a bit…. He laughed more and I saw him trying to flirt with Benny’s wife…. Now Benny never saw this… He thought his wife was his sister…. And he thought I was the nurse… I could see how he thought that about me… the uniforms were alike… but his wife? Oh well… Benny was happy. Mrs. Lane on the other hand I couldn’t tell you… She always looked haggard and Benny? Well he always looked fresh and happy has a bee on a daisy…. He had some great stories too… He had been a cook in the Army… He told of baking hundreds of pie’s…. and Millions of potatoes peeled… Mr. Peterson didn’t give a damn about war food… but Benny? He thought of it as a MUST! He had been proud to serve up those “vittles” for HIS men…. And on several occasions when I was bringing him his dinner tray he told me I should be ashamed for cooking up such slop… I laughed and told him real quick,( every time), I WAS NOT the one that did the cooking in this joint! And every time I would get a smile and a pat from him on my arm… Now Mr. Peterson smoked… and every day he had to be wheeled out side for this to happen… We had rules on such a thing and the main rule was that a resident MUST be accompanied by a nurses aid if they were going to smoke…not because it was against the rules to smoke inside but because they didn't want them burning the place down.... I wheeled him out and gave him the cigarette… He put it in his mouth and I handed him a lighter… Now on this day in particular I was 16 years old… I want you to keep this in mind as the story unfolds and try not to judge me by what a GROWN up what have done…. As we sat there and he smoked we watched other residents walking around and sitting in their wheel chairs… It was a nice summer day… I noticed another aide, about my age sitting with her guy while he smoked… I waved too her and she wheeled him over to sit by us… Her fellow wasn’t as sharp as Mr. Peterson… He sat there in his chair all humped over with his arms tucked in… he reminded me of a kicked dog…. His cigarette smoke curling around his fingers that were stained with nicotine... No, he was not being cared for as well as I was caring for my little people…. I felt so sorry for him… I tried to fix his lap rug that was falling off and he reached out with lightning speed and grabbed my finger and bent it back…. As I struggled to get away, his aide was telling me how she should have told me about him! Tears were in my eyes as I pulled to get my hand back and just as I thought I couldn’t take the pain any longer Mr. Peterson’s fist shot out and socked that man right on the chin! I was shocked at what he had done…. And so was the man because he let my hand go… I told Mr. Peterson that he shouldn’t have done such a thing!.. In all the excitement the man, after getting hit on the chin had dropped his cigarette in his lap… and his aide was struggling to get it off him…. I wanted to help her but I was scared!… I was scared he’d grab me again and hurt me… Instead Mr. Peterson handed me his glass of water and told me to throw it in his lap… I didn’t think… I was use to older people telling me what to do and everything was happening fast… and it didn’t dawn on me that throwing cold water on an old man is just as bad as him being on fire!… He survived the incident to say the least…..After he regained his breath. I felt sick about the whole thing… Mr. Peterson on the other hand thought of his self, the rest of the day, as a defender of women. After we reported what had happened to the head Nurse I took him back to his room and he retold the story to Benny 3 times before the day was over… The next after noon, when I came to work, he didn’t remember a thing a about it…I on the other hand was made to attend a class on emergencies. Me AND the aide that had been there at the time…. We had been found guilty of being a stupid ass…. I did learn a lesson from it though… Never did I just walk up to someone and help them blindly… I made a point to get to know ever resident from then on out. I found out later I had been assaulted because I had reached out to fast and scared him… All he saw was hands coming for his lap… I learned a lot from that class and afterward I was able to work in the lock down unit. It was there that I learned the “mind” never grows old… If it does, than something is wrong with your brain and the side effects of it are catastrophic.