Speakout 6/14

Call 471-6636

My mother is a resident in a local nursing home. I don't know but I heard one of the residents' family saying to the nursing staff today and the Speakout column I read last night kind of tripped something inside of me. There is something you idiotic ingrates need to know. These people that you dress down everyday and you treat like they are dogs, sometimes there are two of them taking care of 20 and 30 residents. They have no help. You come here off the streets and you see your parents or your loved ones and you downgrade the people who work there. Let me tell you something, they're the ones that clean them, they're the ones that fix them, they are the ones who take the blood, they are the ones who get them up on Sunday morning, get them dressed while they are sitting there waiting for you. When the tears start to fall, they're the ones who do the comforting. You to need to think about that when you walk into the nursing home and start in on these girls. They work hard. They work for a little over minimum wage. Most of them are single. They pay their light bill, they pay their rent, because they don't own homes, they can't afford it. They pay their car insurance, they pay their health insurance, they pay their phone bills because they don't dare not have a phone because they live on overtime. They have bosses who are total ingrates. They are dressed down by their peers, they are looked down on, they are never appreciated. Well I'm going to tell you something right now, I appreciate everyone of you CMTs and you CNAs that work with our parents. And you LPNs who do your job, we appreciate you too. We wish there was something more we could do.

I'm looking at the Speakout about what year they lost the high school. My graduation was in 1966 and it was in Morehouse. I think you must have your dates wrong. It was sometime in the early '70s when the high school consolidated with Sikeston. So undoubtedly that person should get his facts straight.

Skateboarding. I was one of the first inventors of the skateboard, growing up in the west Texas city of Odessa. I did not realize what a fad I was inventing. I would take apart my strap on skates and nail them to a 2X6 board - that was a true skateboard. Man what a ride. This is over 40 years ago. We skated on city sidewalks and school basketball courts. Never did we think of skating on post office guard rails, bank drive-thrus, storefront sidewalks. I agree kids today probably need a park to ride in but in the mean time, the parents of these skateboarding kids need to have more control over their kids' actions. Respect for the people's property has gone out the window. Do whatever you want to, whenever you want to and that is on no matter whose property you do it on. Kids today don't care whose property they destroy. It is all about them and not the property of others.

This is the lady with the granddaughter. I put this ad in maybe a couple of months ago in your Speakout column and I did get a lot of response about my granddaughter. This is to the lady who put in there that I must think my granddaughter must really be something. Well, maybe you are right, maybe I do. But I want to let you know that I didn't put a bunch of stuff in there about my granddaughter, I only put in two things about her. But since you think about it, I do think my granddaughter is something. What is wrong with you? Maybe you need to go take an aspirin. If you don't like Speakout, why do read Speakout? Why don't you just go to bed and take an aspirin.

I'm a customer of J.C. Penney and I was in the store today, which is June 5. There was a lady trying to come out the door and there were two little boys there and they were trying to catch a bird. She had to wait until they caught the bird but when she came out the door. He took the bird and squished it in his hands, put it down on the ground, picked it up and threw it back down on the ground and then stomped it. The lady in the brown clothes said "Don't do that, that is cruel. How cruel to treat an animal." She started walking off. I was standing at the clothing rack right at the door and I walked out because the boy's mother walked out. She ran over the lady in the brown and was cursing her and telling her not to be getting on her children. She said, "I didn't, I just said how cruel it is to treat an animal and told him to leave the bird alone." The bird was lying dead. The lady took her two boys, got in her vehicle, drove around to where the lady was in the brown, fingered her, said some cuss words, went around the store and came back in. Needless to say, the lady in brown, used her head. She tried to ignore the best she could and went on but what a bad example the mother of the two children was setting for the two boys. There she knew what they had done to the animal and did not make them pick it up. Second of all, she was cussing the lady in front of them, which the lady didn't get on to them. Furthermore driving up to the lady and fingering her. The lady that was doing all this was in a white van, had two small boys like 8 or 10.