From left to right: Serena Stauffer,
Emily Kramer, Kelvin Reyes.

The arrival of summer, at least before I had acquired my job at a local restaurant, meant long mornings sleeping in below the gentle breeze of a ceiling fan and afternoons spent slathered in sunscreen by the side of the pool. One summer, it meant volunteering at a nursing home fifteen minutes away from my own home.

I was reluctant. I had been exposed to nursing homes at a young age. Both of my great-grandfathers lived in the same nursing home where I was volunteering and my great-grandmother currently lived there. Each time we visited, we could smell the horrible stench of the “food” in the dining rooms. I was also terribly shy and didn’t want to be interrogated by adults. But it was something my mom had insisted that my younger sister and I participate in; we would be giving back to the community as well as boosting our extracurricular activities list for college and beyond. In addition to all of this, we would gain a valuable real-world experience in dealing with a variety of people. I am sure that I created quite the fuss, but in the end my application was turned in and accepted, all on behalf of my mother’s prodding. I was left with no choice but to comply.

At orientation, fellow teen volunteers and I were instructed in the methods of privacy, adhering to the HIPPA law, and the importance of respecting and retaining the dignity of residents. We practiced putting the brakes on wheelchairs so the residents didn’t roll away. Most importantly, we learned to play along. Sometimes the situation wasn’t always what it appeared to be, but for the sake of ensuring the residents’ happiness, we were told to go along with it. I had seen nurses approach female residents who cradled dolls like they were their own babies. The nurses cooed and admired, much to the pride of the “parent” who was either perched in a wheelchair or a well-stuffed recliner.

Our first assignment was to head to one of the memory loss units to play a game called balloon ball, where we would assist the residents in hitting a balloon larger than a blow-up beach ball with pool noodles that had been cut in half. It was good for their hand-eye coordination. I remember that I was scared as the heavy white doors clicked behind us and we were now locked in. All the residents were sitting in a circle in the living room, and my sister and I took turns getting the balloon when a resident missed it or when it landed on the floor. One lady, a previous teacher, snatched the balloon away from the others declaring that she was the teacher, and that no one else was allowed to play. This was my first encounter, as well as my sister’s, with dementia and we were shocked. The nurse, I believe, smoothed the situation over, and led us to the door where she punched the code and the locks clicked open, freeing us.

One morning, behind the locked doors of the memory loss unit, I sat beside a withered old lady, her white braided hair sandwiched between her back and the wooden rocking chair. As a high schooler, I was constantly subject to answering the question on everyone’s mind. What was I going to do after I graduated high school? The white-haired lady next to me asked me this question. We chatted about my rabbits (always a good topic because almost everyone, as I had found out, had owned rabbits in their pre-nursing home lives), and I told her that I was going to go to college after graduation, but I was unsure of my major. She responded by telling me a story, laced with nostalgia, about a job that she had held for years after she graduated from school.

As we sat side-by-side, coloring pictures of chickens, sailboats, and fruit that were copied from a coloring book, our papers resting on a small, white plastic table, the round of the same questions began again, like a broken record stuck on the same lyrics. What was I going to do after high school? Again, I answered by saying I was going to college, my major was undecided, and then we talked about rabbits and her previous job. And then she asked again. And again. With each passing question, my answers became shorter and more concise. At one point, she apologized, saying, “I’m sorry dear, did I already ask you that?”

I smiled one of those big smiles, “No, you didn’t ask me. It’s fine.” I went on to tell her about my rabbits and my undecided major for at least the tenth time. This was the art of playing along. The lady was so sweet and genuine, I really didn’t mind. Besides, some residents were harder to deal with than others. Take, for example, a hundred-year-old woman sleeping in a recliner, waking every few minutes to ask, “How’d you do over Christmas?” and then “Who did you say your husband was?” to a sixty-some “friendly visitor” nearby who patiently explained time and time again that she was not married. Or the resident who aggressively pushed to know where the men were who left her there. (The nurses responded by telling her that the men left, to which she exclaimed, “WHAT?! That is NO way to run the place if you ask ME!”)

My sister was also coloring that morning, but with another resident. When I say coloring, I mean my sister was coloring, and the lady next to her had taken a hairpin out of her hair and was proceeding to hammer it into the plastic tabletop with a box of crayons. My sister, unsure what exactly to do, discouraged her from doing it, but it was to no avail. While volunteering, we couldn’t really carry much around with us, so my sister turned to the plump, white-haired woman in sitting in her wheelchair, and handed her the picture, telling her to keep it. The woman stopped her hammering and her whole face lit up. She clutched it to her chest, showed it to everyone who walked by, and took it with her when she went to eat lunch.

As I continued my volunteer shifts over the summer, getting up early each Tuesday and Thursday morning, I began to look forward to it just a little. The residents weren’t used to seeing younger kids and their faces brightened when they saw us- at least those who were competent enough to know that we were there. I began to enjoy bringing even a tiny sliver of happiness to their days, and their antics brought happiness to my own life, which I still recall with a smile. About an hour before lunch one morning, the group of teen volunteers and I were assigned to go to one of the memory-loss units. Usually, we colored with them, but on that day, the nurses decided that the elderly folks needed some fresh summer air so we shuttled wheelchairs a few feet away to the outside patio and parked them in front of an empty bird feeder and some overgrown grass. Most of the residents were asleep and could have cared less, but one man, who was able to walk and was situated on a stained wooden bench, appeared deep in thought as he surveyed the sky. He turned to me and made a comment about how fast birds could fly. “Yes,” I responded, “they are fast.”

“Why do you think the cops never give birds speeding tickets?” he said. He went on to say that someone needed to be giving traffic tickets to these birds, which happened to be unsuspecting robins flying overhead, and that if they didn’t slow down they would cause accidents. Whoa. I definitely wasn’t expecting that. It took me a minute to collect myself and control my silent laughter. “I guess they’re just so fast the cops can’t catch them,” I said, deciding to play along. Again, he grew quiet and contemplative. Then he posed another question. “Do you think… the mother bird and the father bird ever fight?”

“Well, I don’t think they do. I think they would try to get along.” More silence before another random question. “What would you do…if a bird walked up to you and said, ‘I’d like to talk to you about something?’” I chuckled as I imagined a human-sized bird, wearing a police hat and hopping up the patio toward me. By this time, I was laughing hard, and trying not to show it. “I guess I would try to talk to the bird and get along. Maybe we could be friends.” This must have satisfied him because he was silent again.

I realized that this tactic of playing along could be turned into an art form. It became easier with practice. I also surprised myself by how much this lesson would stick with me years after I had stopped volunteering at the nursing home. At school, if I didn’t exactly agree with the idea my group had for a project, I would just go with the flow. At a job I got a few years later, I worked at a pottery painting studio that was frequented by children and their parents. I was able to use this ingenious skill when interacting with the kids, especially the younger kids and their grand imaginations. I suppose playing along is really about being flexible: being willing to abandon the way you think something should be to please someone else. In that respect, it is also based in compassion, for if you do not care about someone, you would not be ready or willing to accommodate them.

Back at the nursing home, before I left for the day, the elderly man, with the metaphors for all things traffic related, was sitting quietly once again. As I got up to leave, he began yelled in displeasure, “I OBJECT to this! This fly did not pay his toll!” A small, black housefly was inching through the hairs on his pale arm. I wish I could have thought of a witty comeback, perhaps the fly had also evaded the cops, as the birds had, with his diminutive size and lightning speed. But instead, I smiled and most likely told the man to have a good day. He smiled too, and for that reason, and a bit of my own amusement, I was glad that I had decided to use my imagination and play along.

Serena Stauffer is a senior at Penn State University-Harrisburg, where she is completing a bachelor’s degree in English with minors in communications and writing. Outside of school, her interests include baking, reading cookbooks and trips to the beach. She resides in Lititz with her family, rabbit Shadow and dog Brandy.