Elmer Turned 49
For six months, Elmer* has been talking about celebrating his 50th birthday. Perhaps he was hoping that turning 50 would result in bigger and better gifts. It did. Elmer turned 49 on Saturday, December 9.
Elmer is my husband Tom’s brother. Elmer is developmentally disabled as a result of a birth injury. He moved to Colorado more than three years ago. Currently Elmer is living with his brother Bob and family in Lafayette.
We celebrated Elmer’s birthday with an open house. Elmer invited 18 people, and nearly everyone showed up. We met his new friend, Jeffrey* who is also developmentally disabled as well as has Down’s Syndrome. The boys looked alike with their khaki Dockers pants, although Elmer was 49 and Jeffrey was 26.
Elmer started out by telling his new party friends that I was hoping to get a service dog to help me with my Parkinson’s Disease (PD). I tried to quiet Elmer in the middle of the word, “Parkinson’s,’ sometime after “Park,” but I don’t think I was successful.
Elmer knew all of my hot buttons, particularly the one about talking about my PD to total strangers. Elmer has told stories of me having PD to every single neighbor on our block in Northglenn, every single neighbor on his brother’s block in Lafayette, as well as anyone who would listen to him on train trips to and from Milwaukee.
In my kinder moments, I think that Elmer is afraid of PD, with his mother dying from/with it more than two years ago and two of his neighbors dying from the same malady in the idyllic neighborhood where he grew up in Wisconsin. Elmer has an undiagnosed tremor disorder, so I know he must be worried that he is dying from PD as well.
Then Elmer started talking about his new best friends, Dolly Parton and Britney Spears, as though they were bosom buddies. Jeffrey understood the difference between having girls as friends and having girlfriends. He tried to explain this concept to Elmer, but Elmer maintained his belief that if a girl smiled at him, she wanted to be his girlfriend or in his words, “make whoopee with me.”
Many more Elmer stories to follow, but these are a few from earlier times.
Other Elmer Stories from October 2003 through January 2005
Treasures in His Pockets
Elmer, being slim and 5’10” shouldn’t have man-boobs or rather a left man-boob. What was in Elmer’s left pocket? The security guard at the Adams County Court House in Colorado had the misfortune of finding out.
Our friend, Elaine, was caring for Elmer one afternoon, needed to reschedule her appointment for jury duty, and went to court in person to take care of this matter. Elmer accompanied her to court. They waited in a long line at the entry of the court. It was tight security just like the airport. The security guard asked Elmer to empty his pockets in the big silver buckets. Out came Wrigley gum wrappers, six watches, four combs and a business card from a bicycle shop (more later about bicycles). Elmer then attempted to proceed through the metal detectors, but was stopped. “No, no, no,” said the security guard. “Empty the other pockets,” he ordered. Out came more treasures, filling three buckets in total. Elaine’s face looked like boiled ham. Elmer chuckled–no embarrassment there. In the queue behind Elmer were attorneys looking at their watches and rolling their eyes, trying to get to their clients in court. I reflected on many people commanding Elmer to “Get that crap out of your pockets” that I heard over the years.
Karaoke
Tom, Elmer and I frequented a local karaoke joint some Saturday nights. It is one of the few places that accepts Elmer for who he is, where everyone greets him by name and gives him the “high-5”. We don’t sing there but do a lot of people watching.
Elmer orders his “usual”–a glass of red wine followed by a frosty root beer chaser.
One of our favorite people at karaoke is Paul*, an FBI agent, who looks Hispanic but speaks Italian. When I greet him with a hug, I can feel his bulletproof vest underneath his shirt. Paul’s job involves international drug trafficking.
One night Elmer said, “Paul, can I talk to you?” They disappear for a few minutes, and Elmer comes back satisfied that he has found solutions to his problems. When Elmer talks to us, it takes hours; when Elmer talks to Paul, it takes five minutes. Perhaps they teach boundary setting in FBI school.
One night, Paul was sitting at a table behind us. In the middle of a song, Elmer turned around and said, “Paul, are you sleeping with your girlfriend?” nodding to the attractive woman sitting next to him. Elmer then exclaimed in a loud excited voice, “Paul said YES.”
Relationships and Sexual Expression
It all seemed to start with that course called “Relationships and Sexual Expression” offered to developmentally disabled folks who often don’t have anyone to “sexually express” with. You wouldn’t typically find this course in Pittsburgh, Cleveland or Detroit, but more likely in Boulder, Palo Alto or Berkeley.
Elmer is involved in an organization, which provides services for the developmentally disabled in Boulder County. When this organization offered a sex course, Elmer eagerly enrolled in two-eight week sessions totaling sixteen weeks. Each week we would hear about the co-instructors, Kate and Tom, who fortunately didn’t have the same last name as us, but unfortunately had the same first names. When Elmer said to our friends that Kate and Tom were going to show him how to use sex toys, our friends shouted “What?” until they realized, Elmer was referring to his instructors with the same first names as us.
As the weeks progressed, Elmer would come home with more sex talk. We finally had it–enough already–no more sex talk and no more sex classes. And the sex talk was over, for that day anyway.
Bring on the Bicycles
Two summers ago Elmer had a bicycle obsession. He had two bicycles of his own, rode neither of them and only rode Tom’s 27 year old beat-up bike, but wanted more, more, more. We didn’t realize the extent of his obsession until we received a call one night from a Boulder bicycle stop saying that Elmer called them on a daily basis and harassed them, ordered a bicycle on the phone, and couldn’t we stop these menacing phone calls. I ripped the bicycle section out of the yellow pages, put all of our home phones in the trunk of my car when I went to work and wrote a letter of apology to the twenty plus bicycle shops that were underlined in the yellow pages. For a guy who is developmentally disabled, he sure knows how to let his fingers do the walking around the yellow pages. Elmer pestered and badgered his brothers until they finally succumbed–they bought him a shiny red Trek. I saw the new bicycle in the garage the other day–unused, untouched, and spotless.
Zip Up
“Zip up, Elmer.” How many times have I heard Elmer being given that command? When my sister taught second grade, she said “zip up” all day long. But Elmer was 47, not seven.
I yelled at Tom, “Don’t you guys have a system after all these years?” I would think it would be fairly monotonous by now–unzip, pee, zip and wash hands. Somewhere in between pee and zip Elmer forgets the routine. As he returns from the restroom and sees Tom’s glare, he suddenly remembers to zip. How complicated is it?
Six Broken Appliances
When we were sharing Elmer’s caregiving/caretaking with Bob and Sue, Tom’s brother and sister-in-law (we give, Elmer takes), on one day we had six broken appliances between our two households. At our house, the dishwasher was out of commission, the fourth CD player refused to play Elmer’s favorite song, “I Just Called to Say I Love You” and the clothes dryer almost started a fire; at their house, the vacuum sputtered its last breath, dirty clothes were sitting in the broken clothes washer and the grass was growing wildly as the lawn mower refused to start. Coincidentally, all these appliance breakdowns began when Elmer was “helping” us.
When Tom and Elmer visited the friendly repair man at Sears when attempting to bring the CD player back to life, the repair man said “What’s this?” when he saw a gooey substance oozing out of the side. Elmer proudly announced “WD-40,” that and duct tape being the only tools in his repair kit.
I hadn’t heard any woeful tales about broken appliances lately since Tom’s brother and family have been doing most of Elmer’s caregiving. However, while they were on vacation for two weeks, we were in charge of Elmer. Their instructions sheets stated, “We have told Elmer that he is NOT to vacuum or mow the lawn while we are gone. Also, he is not to do the laundry. His laundry skills greatly regress when he is anxious, and we do not want washing machine troubles while we are away.” Hmm . . . sounds suspicious.
I heard arguing and went downstairs to see how Elmer and Tom were getting along. I looked at the pictureless TV, which no longer served any useful purpose. Elmer yelled, “I didn’t do it!”
*Names changed to protect the innocent and/or guilty
These are my stories, and I’m sticking to 'em.
Hi Kate:
I absolutely love to read these stories. They make my day full of laughs! I can't wait to read many more. Hugs Meg
Posted by: Meg | December 11, 2006 at 07:01 PM