Wednesday, October 2, 2013

i hate this woman

On weekends I share the pool with college students who teach small fry how to swim.  I enjoy watching screaming toddlers thrown in the water as much as the next guy but I'm also glad for the distraction. Swimming for ninety minutes does not allow you to do anything productive on the side like peeling potatoes or clipping coupons.


And then Caroline walked in dragging her spawn behind her, an eight-year-old boy with the same albino hair shade as his mother. I hate this woman. I worked with her a few years back at a second-rate nursing facility run by a bunch of Texans who previously  manufactured tires. She was an occupational therapist fresh out of school, first job EVER at a time when therapies first exploded on the medical market, thank you Medicare. I mean you shouldn't have to pay ninety bucks an hour to relearn how to comb your hair. Mothers have been doing this for free for years.

Caroline was 26 years old and still living with her parents and was not responsible for a lick of housework. In the early days when we were still friendly I recommended it was time to move out and begin a real grown-up's life. The next day she bought a $60,000 pick-up truck and couldn't "possibly take on the added burden of rent and a water bill."

She had a boyfriend named Frosty, never did hear the explanation for that one and he regularly made her cry "but he always apologizes later."  I was torn between concern and loss of respect for this mouseketeer.

Her most annoying feature was a lack of professionalism and granted, I set the bar high but I am the oldest Catholic daughter raised by a Marine. Our residents were ancient people and their children were retired and living on the golf course. At care plan meetings Caroline would inevitably say how "awesome your mom is doing and she's so cute, too!!!" Caroline was immune to the cringing looks on their faces. She was only able to interpret a very shallow slice of the action in front of her.

When I tried to talk to her about this she started crying and then jumped management channels and actually called the big wig of that undisciplined facility, some honcho living several hundred miles away who wore a white cowboy hat when he visited us once a year. I was called on the carpet and I realized I needed to work somewhere else where management did the employee damage control and not the cute little social worker I was at the time.

I transferred to another facility and Caroline was actually one of the minor reasons, maybe not a reason at all. And wham! bam! my trainer was no other than Caroline's mother. I could tell by the way she narrowed her eyes at me that Caroline had filled her in on my story and she unfairly had misrepresented me as she had done to Cowboy Bob. "I like your hair," I said to Patricia who was wearing a brown football helmet for a coiffure but it was really shiny. "I was poor when I grew up and I learned to do my own hair," she spit at me. Holy Protective Mothers, Batman and Caroline, grow the fuck up.

 

4 comments:

Dan Fallon said...

DAMMMMMMNNNNN, Woman!!!

Someday I'll tell you about the priest who morphed into Jesus itself. Or so he thought.

Arizaphale said...

Her mum was your trainer???? That sucks! I want to slap her just reading about her.
So, at the pool, with her kid, had she morphed into her mother?

dawn marie giegerich said...

Yeap, had the same fat butt.

BrightenedBoy said...

I do despise that working-class contempt for anyone who didn't have to eat dirt growing up.