Surviving Barstool | New Episodes Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday 8PM ETTUNE IN

A Christmas Story

Giphy Images.

Here's one line of depressing backstory- 

Unfortunately, my mother-in-law has dementia.

Her name is Lorraine, and Lorraine's long-term memory is still spot-on, but she is unable to retain almost anything in the short term… Such as whether or not she has taken her meds, where she is at any given time, or whether or not she turned off her stove. And since the doctors have told us to expect her condition to only get worse as time goes on, we were forced to put her into a very expensive assisted living space not far from our home that does an EXCELLENT job taking care of her when we cannot.

Since it is the Christmas Season, and this place where she lives is constantly doing crafts and shows for their residents, my wife, daughter, and I offered to drop by the common room this past weekend to sing some carols, have some cocoa, and play some games with the other people on Lorraine's floor.

We set up a karaoke speaker/mic combo and my daughter sang probably a dozen Christmas classics, while my wife helped the residents fold construction paper into origami snowflakes.

After the caroling, we still had some time to kill, so I began playing Hangman with the residents on a large dry-erase board.

Every one of the Hangman answers was the title of a popular Christmas tune (including a couple of classics my kid just sung), and the old folks were absolutely TERRIBLE at guessing the answers. Still, we had some good clean fun trying to solve each puzzle.

That is until… Out of the blue… The fun became nowhere near as clean.

On the very last three-word puzzle that we were trying, I had written on the greaseboard the following letters…

D - C K

-  -  -

- A L L S

We got to this point in the game only after the residents had incorrectly guessed the letters NP, T, R, A, and G, so our hangman already had a head, neck, two arms, torso, and one leg, and he was perilously close to being fully hanged.

Before I asked the group to guess another letter, I asked the crowd of 15 dementia-riddled seniors if they had any guesses as to what popular Christmas song was partially written on my board and a woman who previously refused to wear shoes or guess any of the other puzzles blurted out… 

"That's easy… It's DICK AND BALLS."

My daughter gasped, my mouth dropped open, and it took about a second and a half before the rest of my vintage puzzlers began to laugh hysterically. And it got even louder when the brightest bulb in the group, an 82-year-old former engineer named Ed, blurted out while everyone was laughing, "I guess you are what you eat, Sheila!"

From a comedic perspective, it wasn't a perfect spot for that joke, but it brought the house down even more than Sheila's "dick and balls" comment.

When the woman who oversees the floor came over to inspect what all the commotion was about, I explained to her what had just transpired while the group continued to laugh in the background, and she quickly said, "Lemme guess… It was Sheila who was talking about privates, and that's gotta be Ed with the 'you are what you eat' comment?"

Apparently, Sheila has been yearning for cock ever since her husband passed in 2022, and like I said before, Ed is definitely the sharpest knife in that senile drawer.  

I try to use instances like this as a teachable moment when my kids are around, so when my wife, daughter, and I were in our car driving home, I told my daughter, "I'm very proud of you helping out with that today, and if you're going to walk away with any lesson from the evening it's the following- When life hands you a dick and balls, be less like Sheila and more like Ed."

Merry Christmas to all (except that old whore, Sheila), and to all a report.

-Large


Here's a little recommendation for a breakfast sando next time you're in Philly…

TAR

-L