Location: The Imperial Nursing Home
Date: Thursday, August 06, 2015; 6:30-7:45 pm
I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make it here this
evening, but decided to go. I arrived to
see Vita, who is a regular volunteer, sitting with a senior gentleman whom I
have seen from my very first visit to this place. Our
leader Celene was here and we were joined by a first time volunteer. She had just moved from New York and I asked
why! We talked about ‘NY Cares’ and how Chicago Cares claims
that it was founded before them and vice versa.
Always the competition. The
prizes were in a paper bag – with the ban on plastics and what not – and there
was the usual collection of things including stuffed toys, which people over
here particularly enjoy. Celene asked if
I would like to call the game and I said sure.
I went inside with Vita while Celene gave the new volunteer an overview
of the place.
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| They love these over here |
It was a full house inside but I spotted my friend Polly. I went to say hello and she said “Long time no see”. She had recognized me, though I was sad to
see that she looked a little frailer since I’d last seen her. But even with that, she still had that impish
grin which I love. Another volunteer
joined us and I recognized him from the ‘Judge
Fisher’ project on Tuesday. I had
the usual “hamster wheel” with balls and also a board to put them in. Since Celene had come in, we could now begin. I started calling and I was loud and
repeating the numbers – so as not to have any complaints. We could have 2 winners per board and over
here you are allowed to win twice on the same board. But after the 2 wins, you had to give your
prize away. Once someone won, Celene
would go to them with the prizes and have the resident have their pick.
The game was proceeding well, but the number balls were
really old and some were difficult to read.
In fact, numbers had been written by hand on some of them. Some of the balls would fall down and I would
try to insert them in the right place in the queue. But then I thought that this is such a game
of chance, that maybe if I don’t put the balls in right place, I am adding
another variable. As you can see, I had plenty of thoughts in my head. After 2 winners I would ask everyone to “clear the board” and then after a bit
of time ask if everyone was ready. Well,
some got annoyed that I was rushing them and some thought I was delaying. Oh well, you can’t win em all.
I was standing next to 2 vending machines and one gentleman
came to get soda. I tried to convince
him to join us but to no avail. At one
stage I said that I had “Bingo” on my
board since entire row on the board had filled up. It happened other times and it was an
interesting coincidence that many people actually won when that happened. Almost everyone won this evening and we
wrapped up on time. I told Celene that
one way we could prolong the game was by having a round of “4-corners Bingo” – something I had learnt earlier this week. I wheeled Polly to the Elevators, passing a
gentleman on the outside and commentated on it like it was an Automobile
race. Only one of the elevators was
working this evening and so there was a huge line of wheelchairs to get
in. When I left, it looked like
Chicago’s interstate during rush hour!
*All the client's names have been changed in order to respect their
privacy
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