by Emma Riley Sutton

Created on: March 27, 2008   Last Updated: June 25, 2008

My grandfather was always a funny man. He had been to compared to Will Rogers on more than one occasion. He had a quick, down-home wit that amused everyone. When we found out he had Alzheimer's, we thought this side of him would be taken over by the disease. In some ways it was, but, we found a way to find humor in that awful disease. People who did not know him before he had Alzheimer's sometimes thought we were mocking him. That was never the case! If he had been the pre-Alzheimer's person he had been, he would have laughed as well. We had

to keep that spirit alive.

One such instance took place at a stop light. We were coming back from a doctor's appointment. The car next to us was filled with, to put it delicately, non-Caucasians. Loud music throbbed from the car. My grandfather, normally not a racist or one to judge by another by their ethnic background, somehow remembered how to work the controls to roll down the window. Before we could roll the window up (he was still holding down the button and the other controls wouldn't work) started shouting racial "put downs" at them. He then begin to wave his arm out the window.

The young men turned down the music. They now were able to hear everything my grandfather was shouting at them.

We were stuck. Cars in front and behind us, we couldn't drive away. We tried to get him to be quiet, but it didn't work. He continued his shouting.

"What the #&*@$ is wrong with you?" one of them shouted back, waving a clenched fist.

My grandfather continued to yell.

"What the ^*#@% is wrong with you?" the young man yelled again. "You got old timers or something?"

"Yeah, I do," my grandfather shouted back. "And, you have young timers."

The light changed and we got out of there as quickly as possible. Once we could no longer be seen by those young men, my mother and I burst into laughter. We still use the term "young timers" when we forget something we should know.

Another time took place in the doctor's office in the mid 1990s. The geriatric specialist was grilling my grandfather, trying to see what he could and could not remember. We hated this part of the exam. It was almost like the doctor was trying to make him look and feel bad, even though that was not the case.

The doctor asked my grandfather who the president was. My grandfather would normally say Truman or Hoover. Today, however, he didn't seem to be in the mood to answer. The doctor asked the question several times, to which my grandfather explained, each time, that it was a hard

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