Must have intuited this. I remember when I was 19 and working in an assisted living place that gave me no real heads up certain residents had dementia and alzheimers (probably because they weren’t supposed to take them). I found a woman who wasn’t dressed at all trying to lug an empty suitcase out of the building at 4am and the other aid (there were only 2 of us for 50 people) was busy. I say “oh where are you off to?” You know. Surprised. And she says that she has to get out of here. And I say “okay well let’s go pack that suitcase then” hoping that’ll buy time. And she goes okay and we go back to her room. And she’s packing, clearly agitated, and I have no training on this so I’m looking around the room thinking fuck how am I gonna stop her from leaving all by myself and I notice everything in the room is yellow so I blurt out “what’s your favorite color?” And that woman freezes and looks at me so confused and goes “you know, I’m not sure” and for some reason she didn’t want to keep packing after that and got back in bed.
I tell my parents about it. They think it’s the funniest thing. I forget about it. Years later my mom is taking care of my grandmother as she’s declining and who was getting really angry and agitated with some doctors and in my mom’s panic to calm my grandmother down my mom, remembering me, blurts out “what’s your favorite color?” And this apparently threw my grandmother enough that she calmed down and the doctors were like woah great thinking you must have some training and my mom was all like no no my kid is a CNA, I learned from them.
And I didn’t have the heart to tell her that was in no way my training and 100% me panicking out loud to an elderly woman determined to take an au natural vacation.
