This is just a thread to post crap I write. Brutal honesty is appreciated. Also this way I don't keep creating new threads.

The following are some snippets of a story.


Where do you even begin with a man like Fred?

Let me start with the fact that I am not trying to bash Fred, he was an excellent provider and a decent man but old age just seemed to take it's toll on him in a strange way.

Fred was not an old soul but rather an old man with a bitter disposition. He was my grandfather on my mother's side. Fred had a rough childhood from what I understand but seeing as how he always exaggerated everything I can never really tell how much of it was his own fault.

We came to live with Fred in 1990 to help take care of him and keep him company after the death of his wife Kitty. In the beginning of this venture Fred was still mobile. He would have his outings and all was realatively well. As time moved on however things took on a completely different shape, and this is where I will begin.

Fred stopped going out as he felt he didn't have much to live for since Kitty had passed on. He stopped going outside alltogether, not even to walk the dog who my grandma lovingly named Pootsie. Binding yourself to the inside of your house can do strange things to a person. Fred's life consisted of three rooms - the bedroom, the living room, and the kitchen - all of my stories happen there.

Pootsie was a schitzu and I stress the first syllable of this word. Pootsie was getting quite old herself and by no means was she friendly to anyone but Fred. This probably had to do with the fact that Fred would personally cook her seasoned chicken for lunch. Pootsie lived off of chicken and more commonly carpet fuzz, which became her staple only after she licked the varnish off of all the hard wood floors.

Fred loved this dog, though in reality he hated dogs. He swore that Kitty had come back to him in the dog but this dog was still quite mean and sometimes would turn on Fred himself. On one such occasion this happened and Fred went to kick the dog, and missed. He fell quite hard by the fireplace and we ended up taking him to the hospital where upon we found out he had slipped a disc in his hip. This is only important because it leads to the fact that he was so stubborn, he didn't want to excercise and ended up buying himself a wheelchair.

He started using the wheelchair periodically, after seeing how much sympathy he achieved with it he decided that it would become a permenant fixture to his rear. When people would visit we got to relive him telling the story of his "second stroke" by the fireplace while patting the wheelchair like an old friend (the first occured when my mother was seventeen and in all truth was another failed dog kicking incident). Fred didnt even use his arms to get around in it. He would just drag himself by the heels of his feet, uncut toenails tapping on the floor like a velociraptor on the prowl. Over time, no excercise, walking, or standing he became one with the chair. They entered and inseperable union.

Now Fred had dentures but never wore them and every time he spoke his lips would press together up to the gums and the extra air would escape out his nose. He also liked to chain smoke, or rather hold a cigarette until the ash was impossibly long. He almost never smoked them later on in life but would light and hold them, left arm propped on his elbow on the table, pinky out to the side like it was a cup of tea. He would trance out and sit there holding the cig, mouth hanging completely agape.

This leads us into his very long Demand and Declaration phase of our time together. The most often heard are as follows:

"WHOA, WHOA, WHOA WHOA WHOA!" This applies to many things such as, if you were making him a cup of coffee before he had the chance to demand it, extreme rubber necking in the car while he was driving five miles an hour in a 45 mph zone with a semi barreling down on him, if you tried to take away his blessed "one" cup of southren comfort for the day (which was really one cup just refilled many many times), and if you actually bought him lobster for dinner while the rest of the family ate pizza. I know that last statement sounds strange but will be covered further next.

"LOBSTER! I WANT LOBSTER FOR DINNER!" This was heard every day a few times a day. Fred even kept a daily grocery list on the table and the first thing on it was ALWAYS Lobster. One night we bought him his beloved lobster but none of us were in the mood for some so we ordered pizza. Fred had a 'grass is always greener' complex, he hated pizza. If we were all eating it while he was having lobster, pizza would become his favorite food. He was funny about food in general. You would try to give him something he would like and he wouldn't want it but if you didn't get him what he asked for he would moan and demand it. It was always a no win situation. If my mother put her plate of dinner on the table before Fred has his he would take her plate and eat it.

"I'LL KILL MYSELF" followed or proceeded by "I'LL SELL THE HOUSE AND KILL THE DOG!" This was always the end of any and every confrontation. Here is a sample of one such confrontation, for refrence Ray is my father. The set up for this fight was that Fred had decided right before dinner that underwear looks much better in the garbage can than actually on.
Ray - "Where's your underwear?"
Fred - "What?"
Ray- "Your underwear, where is it?"
Fred - "I don't know what your talking about."
Ray - "Your underwear Fred, where is it? Why are you sitting at the dinner table without underwear on."
Fred - "It's in the garbage."
Ray - "Why is it in the garbage?"
Fred - "Huh?"
Ray - "Your underwear Fred. Why is it in the garbage?"
Fred - "What underwear?"
Ray - "Yours!"
Fred - "I don't know what the hell your talking about."
Ray - "Please go put some underwear on."
Fred - "GODDAMNIT! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!"
Ray - "No, you need to put some undewear on."
Fred - "LEAVE ME ALONE! I'LL SELL THE HOUSE AND KILL THE DOG!"
Ray - "This has nothing to do with that, Just put these on." (he had gone and gotten some underwear)
Fred - "I'LL KILL MYSELF! WILL THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY?! THEN YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT ME! I'LL JUST KILL MYSELF! I"LL KILL MYSELF!"
At which point you knew it was pointless to even try to finish the confrontation and that it was just better to walk away. The first fight between Ray and Fred was over pootsie and her poo and where Fred's ending argument declerations were birthed into creation to forever taunt and torment us.

And now on to the Demand end of the phase. Every morning my father would make Fred a cup of coffee which he grew very accustomed to. When we hit the demand and declaration phase it became a game for Fred. As my father would reach for the pot of coffee to make him a cup Fred would pipe up and very loudly demand "GET ME A CUP OF COFFEE!" In doing so he would take any and all joy away from doing something nice for him. Fred would do this to feel as though he had people jumping through hoops just for his enjoyment. Fred applied this technique to anything he could, such as, "GET THE MAIL", "TRIM MY NOSE HAIR", "MAKE ME DINNER", "MAKE MY BED", and countless others.

Another popluar Fred manuever occured only among us granddaughters. Fred would plainly ask "Are you wearing a bra?" to which I would respond "No" or "Yes" given the truth and without fail he would finish off with "Well PROVE it". One time he actually leaned over during the middle of a family dinner and grabbed my right breast. He wasn't even pretending to reach for the salt. I was happily eating my dinner and then HONK! I never sat nex to him at the table again.

He also loved to slap people on the rear. I had to eventually tell any company I had visiting to always walk past Fred while facing him and to stand at a little more than an arms length away at all times.

Fred's favorite movie was Logans Run. One afternoon we finally figured out exactly why. He would fast forward the tape to the part where Jenny Aqutter is taking her shirt off to dry it on the fire. You get a glimpse of her breasts as she is doing so. This fatefull afternoon he had the volume up extremely high and we kept hearing silence, a little bit of the movie and more silence. This went on for no less than 6 hours. We tip-toed in to see what he was doing and found him rewinding and watching that one part over and over and over. Fred heard us and immediately turned the t.v. off and pretended like he wasn't watching anything.

Fred never once let go of the demand and declaration phase once he adobted it into his heart. We did all that we could to make him happy but the half a bottle of southren comfort a day and the chain smoking eventually took it's toll on his body. Around the Christmas of 2000 I got a call that he was in the hospital.

I remember my father telling me that Fred had asked him on every visit to "PULL OUT THESE GODDAMN IV'S AND LET ME DIE".

<deleted for posterity>

I actually laughed out loud then felt secretly guilty. Pretty good for never having known him. Though mom and dad used to leave him in my care on some weekends and I have to admit I did think of ways I could have forced a heart attack. Damn morals kept getting in the way of going through with it though.