Elimination Day at Flashback Manor

I always flash back to 1967 and the so-called “Summer of Love” here at Flashback Manor Retirement Community (not its real name) on elimination, i.e. laxative day. The burned-out hippies and I sing our favorite tunes from those old-timey Woodstock and Monterey concerts all morning long while they strain on the toilet. It’s my job to help them squat in place and do their business since the love-in crowd no longer walks or holds steady too well. Without my help these wasted boomers would fall on the bathroom tile and bust a hip for sure.

I always know whose room I’m near inside the manor, and I’d know that even if I were blind as a turnip. Right now I know I’m outside Emma Bass’s room, because I hear her in there belting out a Temptations song, then a hit by the Shirelles followed by a chart-topper by the Supremes, while she waits for me to lift her aboard the porcelain throne and hold her still. I heft her up, singing the doo-langs and ooh-wee background fills while Emma sings the main melodies. We sound terrible together, but we like it.

I try hard to hit the high notes when I accompany Birdie Vance, a next-door neighbor of Emma Bass’s who is a doo-wop and Four Seasons fan. Birdie reaches all those sky-high falsetto parts, those ah-oohs and ah-ooh-eeees, before she trips the flush handle. Birdie also digs Elvis, and I do a bunch of uh-huh, ah-uh-huhs, and all-right-nows, before she flushes. She does the Beach Boys too, and I add a lot of bah-rums and brum-brums to their engine-revving fast car songs, whether those sounds are in the originals or not. I take that artistic license.

The aged menfolk are more British Invasion types: Beatles, Stones, and now and then a blues rocker like Hendrix. I do a lot of oh-yeahhhhs and oooohs with the Beatles, just sort of hum along with the Stones, but with Jimi I imitate the wah-wah guitar, going wah-wha, wha-wha-wha-wha for all I’m worth. Scott, the oldster who is really into Hendrix, takes about six different meds and is always ready to kick out the jams on bowel cleansing day. Some days he is so “stone free” he doesn’t need a bowel movement prep to get going, but starts wah-wahing at breakfast or in the shower.

And that’s what I do all morning long today: go down the hall and lift Emma and Birdie and the menfolk on and off the commode and chime in on their post-MiraLAX or post-Fleet or post-whatever drug they took vocalizing. I croon shoo-bop shoo-bop, dang-a-lang-a-ding-dong, ooh-wee-baby, dit-dit-dit, wah-wah-wah, and so on, for hours. I never embarrass myself, because the nurse aides do the more intimate work of inserting the Fleet disposables or other irrigation devices. I try not to be around when that goes on, particularly with the ladies.

By now you’re wondering, why is everyone singing while they eliminate? It’s the medication, got to be. Whatever medicine or combo of meds they use at the manor, it brings out the musical side of the residents. My theory is that the stuff gets absorbed in the butt and filters up to the hipsters’ brains, where it triggers them to warble through their most cherished songs. Maybe it has some of that “flower power” pot in it, the kind we all toked back in the day, myself included. It’s cool by me, whatever the drug is, though I certainly don’t touch it nowadays. I don’t ask the name of the junk, either. The only “high” I get nowadays is my paycheck, slim as it is.

By ten a.m. my back is killing me from lifting all these often overweight residents onto and off of the potty seat, but before I take a break and grab an Advil I stop in on Pete. Pete’s a bit younger than the others, but suffered an aneurysm on the brain and can hardly walk. He’s dead weight to me as far as sitting him up in the john, but he’s a big fan of the Ramones and sings their tunes nonstop on elimination day. That means I have to shout 1,2,3,4 as fast as I can to count off each song the way the band used to. I groove on that music as much as Pete does, but man, my back, my aching back.

Dit-dit-dit, yah-yah-yah. Full confession, I’m as old as a lot of these people, and when I finally retire from my orderly job here, I just might become their neighbor. My boss, Nurse Hoplight, says she has a room reserved for me whenever I want it, and I think she means it. I know she thinks I’m ready to collapse, bless her heart, and there are days when I almost keel over dead at the sight of her. Of course my occupancy would have to be approved by young Mr. Hunkel, the administrator. But even he doesn’t hate me, despite that I could never afford the rates. Maybe he’d find a way for me to move in here, for old time’s sake. I’ve worked at the manor longer than he has.

And I know the songs—the ones they’re singing today, anyway.

END

BIO: Michael Fowler writes humor and horror in Ohio. He has recent posts at Defenestration, Little Old Lady Comedy, and The Freak!