Afternoons With Deadwood Dick & Rattlesnake Pete

So my father, my real father, now lives in a nursing home which is a long story I’ll maybe tell another time. Being as he is a writer and is always creating characters in his mind, he apparently spends his days  creating personas for the various residents whom he encounters on a daily basis. Enter Deadwood Dick, the skinny man in the wheelchair who wears brown pants, a red collared, western style shirt, and a straw cowboy hat. This character wheels up to my father’s room every 20 minutes or so, stops, grabs the door frame, and uses it to projectile his wheelchair down the hallway towards who knows what causing my father to call out every time, “There’s Deadwood Dick!” 

Then there is the elderly wheelchair speed racer who zooms by periodically, with a bit of a blank stare which my father describes as a “sideways glance that he manipulates in order to sneak a peek at the ladies.” This one is Rattlesnake Pete. The “ladies” are the smiley face lady who continually rolls by with a grin on her face yet not a clue where she is or what she is doing, and the gray haired woman with the glasses who told my sister that she knew our mother and that they went back 20 years or so (my sister has no idea who this person is,nor would our mother if she were still alive). 

Dad kept us laughing the whole time as he described these “characters” and what he imagined they were up to. I’m really not sure if he was writing the story in jest, or if he truly believes what he was saying to be true! He may be on to something, though, for when I walked down the hallway to use the restroom, Rattlesnake Pete flashed me a smile and said, “Hi!” I smiled back and greeted him, but I quickly walked away. Maybe he does have a thing for the ladies!