Thursday, June 19, 2008

Haircut

I have to tip my hat to whomever came up with this idea: a fake bus stop outside a nursing home. Patients suffering from dementia, who wake up in a strange place and just want to go home, walk out the door - because, after all, they are not prisoners - and see the bus stop. They may not be able to remember who they are or what they had for breakfast, but they remember bus stops and what they are for and they sit right down and wait for the bus.

Kindly staff members invite them inside for a cup of coffee or tea while they wait and before they've finished, the elderly patient usually doesn't remember why they wanted to leave in the first place.

It's simple, and it's brilliant.

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Because he's ridden a Harley his whole life, my grandfather looks at everything from a biker's perspective. I once gave him a haircut and got a little carried away, cutting it a bit short.

He looked at the pile of gray hair on the floor, smiled, and said, "You cut off all the chrome."

[Life in These United States, thanks to Reader's Digest]

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WISDOM for YOUR WEEK: "The righteous will flourish like a palm tree ... they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming 'The Lord is upright.' " (Psalm 92:12-15)

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