Why be Normal?

A dragon Lily in my yard summer 2008.

I have had some of the oddest jobs, and in my colorful working career I have encountered some of the most unique characters that you couldn’t create if you tried.  Obsessive compulsives, multiple personalities, street thugs, mentally retarded, I’ve worked with them all.

Take Lily for example.

Lily is about three feet tall and about three feet wide.  Coke bottle glasses.  Long black/gray hair.  Demanding.  She was competent enough to be living on her own for years although with the help of 40+ hours a week of individual staffing.  I was one of her relief workers, filling in when others needed some time off.

Lily’s social worker was adamant that Lily maintain a diet.  Significantly overweight, Lily struggled with heart disease and her social worker wanted to help her by creating a diet that would control portions.  The diet was very creative and consisted of regimented snacks, very little food left in the house, etc.  The social worker thought she was smarter than Lily, which was her first mistake.  (Her second was doling out diet advice when she was about 5 feet tall and close to 300 pounds herself.  A taller, more competent version of Lily).

Every shift I worked with Lily we had to weigh her.  This was a production in itself.  Lily would strip down to her underwear (her choice) and you had to put the scale into the middle of the kitchen floor.  Lily would ballet style walk up to the scale, step on, and place both feet close together, spreading her arms wide as if she was going to take off.  Why me?  I thought the first time.  Why not me?  I thought each subsequent time.  You have seen nothing if you have not seen a 3 foot tall woman in her underwear playing prima ballerina as she is about to get weighed. 

It was odd, that with such a strict diet, Lily really wasn’t losing much weight.  They had her at the YMCA in a swimming class (that is another story about powdering that I will have to share another time) and had her active throughout the week.  I learned her secret by accident while out to dinner one night.

There I sat, having dinner with my friends.  I saw Lily and went over to her table to say hi because she was sitting alone.  I figured she was having a coffee or something because she only had $1 a day spending money in order for her not to buy all kinds of junk food.  There sat in front of Lily a cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake.  She said to me, “I’m busy now”, and brushed me aside with her hand. 

I sat back down, stunned.  When Lily left, she had a to go sundae with her as well.  Lily’s waitress came over to me (it was a slow night and she saw me talking to her).  She told me that Lily comes in every night and could we tell her to stop?  She let me know that Lily first came in about a year ago, ordered a large meal, ate and then said “thank you” and walked out the door.  She had eaten at the restaurant nearly every night since without paying.  Each night thanking the waitress for her food and leaving.  I then learned she headed over to the local Dunkin Donuts next, got a coffee and donuts to go, and proceeded home.  Every night she was eating her sundaes and every morning she had donuts to eat.  Hah! 

Some people say that she might have been manipulative.  I say she was being creative and self advocating.  Who was going to stop a 3 foot tall, 3 foot wide woman from walking out the door without paying, who was ever so polite about the whole thing?

Even after I talked to Lily, there was no change in her behavior.  I tried to convince her social worker to be more liberal on the diet foods, that Lily was actually walking almost two miles round trip to the restaurant every night when we couldn’t get her to walk 100 feet.  None of this worked.  Lily had her plan and she stuck with it.  Diet be damned.

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