WWWE: Six Years of Hope - Part III

So my time came to an end at the first group home I worked at. I was transferred to another home which housed six residents, three men and three women. The residents at this house are able to do many things on their own unlike the first house I worked in. Most of them could talk and carry on a conversation pretty well. Two of the men are deaf but could communicate through sign language and they even had a deaf staff member who could communicate well with them. They could all feed themselves and they all had their own hobbies and activities they liked to do.

One of the women liked to hang around the staff most of the time and talk to them. She had a good sense of humor and would sarcastically call some of the female staff "Miss America". Actually all the staff were female except for me.

One of the deaf guys that lived there liked to try and sneak food out of the refrigerator when no one was looking. He was also on a community outing plan that allowed him to go to the local bar for one drink of beer every payday. So every time he got his check he would yell "BEER!" Of course he got outside more than just once every two weeks. It's just that the state requires we do "plans" for the residents.

Another one of the women is very high functioning and probably had more mental health issues rather than mental retardation. She kind of reminded me of Lisa Simpson, she had the same laugh as her. She is one of the more independent residents and has a job outside of Hope Enterprises. Many of the residents at Hope work at Hope's warehouse doing multiple jobs for different companies which keep their skills in practice. The residents that are unable to work or even perform simple tasks attend a day program which is a lot like day care. I mentioned it a couple posts ago I think.

The other deaf resident liked to spend his free time playing Donkey Kong Country on his Super Nintendo. He liked to watch video tapes too. One time he brought me one that wasn't working right. Part of the tape had been damaged. So I took it apart and fixed it for him. That was a big mistake because after that he handed me a bunch of other tapes. Another thing he enjoyed doing was mimicking gestures and facial expressions he would see in movies. He kind of reminded me of a silent movie actor like Charlie Chaplin or something like that.

The third woman who lived there moved in just a few days after I started working at the house. She has a lot of energy. We'd play soccer in the backyard and she would wear me out. One time she wanted to go rollerskating at the YMCA. She was a big girl and I thought it was a bad idea, but she really wanted to go. I was a little nervous about it because I though she was going to end up in the ER or perhaps I would end up in the ER. But she did pretty good. She fell once but she was okay. She's actually lost a lot of weight since then and last time I heard, she was engaged to marry another resident at Hope.

I have one more resident to talk about but I'll save that for next time. I wish I had more stories about the other residents but I was only at the house for about a month and then they decided they wanted to transfer me again. The other staff were apparently uncomfortable with having me, a male staff there. It's unfortunate that there is a lot of sexism in the work place. There are a lot of women who have to put up with it in a workplace that has mostly male employees. I had to put up with it in a place that had mostly female employees. I was at the other end of the spectrum in a sense. But all this transferring to different houses started making me feel unwanted. So I'll talk about the sixth resident in my next post and then the post after that will include the absolute worst boss ever. See you next time!