Thursday, January 21, 2010

Four Sure Ways to Bring A Smile

Today I went to an assisted living facility to present a slide show to the residents. About 25 or 30 people showed up. The slide show was fairly easy to do. I simply downloaded a bunch of pictures of the natural wonders of the world along with some slides on different moon shots I found. There were about 80 slides in all. But the interesting thing about all of this is that as people filed into the room where I gave the show, I had my laptop on and the picture of my grand children that you see at right was the desktop picture. It's amazing how much interest it drew. I was asked a million questions about them. How old are they? What are their names? Is that little blond in the lower left corner as mischievous as she looks? Where do they live? What are some things I do with them? And that's just a few. I could have scrapped the original slide show and spent the next 45 minutes talking about these four little gems and showing more pictures (I have a few more). It's just one more example of how easy it is to make elderly people happy. And there's nothing that makes them happier than children. Once I brought my oldest grand child, Brooke, to this facility to visit her great grand mother. So many people made a fuss over her. That's why I like volunteer work. It takes so little effort to make people happy. All they really want is to know that someone is interested in them. I guess that's all anyone really wants. Unfortunately for many of these folks, families place them in an otherwise fine location and then forget about them. That's why they need people (usually once they've retired) to take an interest in them. It's a great way to spend time. Right now Brooke, Courtney, Cole and Nicholas don't know how happy they made people today but I'll be sure to tell them some day when they come with their parents to visit me!

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