What Do You Say to That???

Tonight we ordered pizza from Papa Murphy's (one of our favorite places). We asked the guys what kind of pizza they wanted and they each chose one kind. When Lowell arrived home with it, he went upstairs and informed Mr. Mediterranean Chicken Herb Delite that his pizza was here. Lowell was told to put the pizza in the freezer and he would make it later. About 45 minutes later, this same guys who didn't want his pizza bounces downstairs and says, "Is the pizza ready?" I just looked at him in shock for a minute and then responded that we were of the understanding that he didn't want his yet and therefore it was in the freezer. He looks at me like I am crazy and says, "Yeah, I don't want mine yet, I was planning on eating some of (downstairs roommate's) and then fixing mine later when he's asleep so I don't have to share." Now I am normally very quick with a response, but what do you even say to that???? Mr. I want to have my pizza and eat it too!

Sharing this conversation with Lowell, we started talking about some of our favorite "what do you say to that" stories. Here are a couple.

We had a new guy move into the group home who was relatively high functioning. He was carrying a copy of the manual for the Arkansas Driving Test. He very politely asked me if I would help him study. (We had previously had a client with his license, so this wasn't a terribly odd request.) We set a time that I would sit down with him and go over the book together. When that time came, he pulled out the manual, handed it to me, and when I opened it up, he said, "Oh yeah, first can you teach me to read?" Hmmmmm, probably not....

When Joshua was very young, we were serving one young man who, in Joshua's defense, did sometimes seem very feminine. Joshua asked him, "Are you a boy or a girl?" This guy thought for a minute and responded, "Of course I'm a boy. And I know I am because I live in the boy's hall." Guess that answered that.

One of my favorite lines though has to be the time that one client got into a fist fight with another. We were at the emergency room waiting for the physician to come in and examine his eye, which was already immensely swollen and all colors of blue and purple. It looked really awful and the whole side of his face was quickly swelling. I must interject here that the other guy didn't have a scratch on him and we were at the local ER. We were discussing the fight and what caused it and how there are really better options for settling differences, when he looks up at me and says, "If the fight hadn't been stopped, I could have taken him. He hits like a girl!" Umm, yeah, maybe Laila Ali or something. He looked more like he'd been hit by a freight train, but whatever, hang on to that pride.

And then there was the sixty-year-old lady with Down Syndrome, who thought Lowell was a real "looker" but assured me on a regular basis that I had no need to worry, she "respected me too much to take my husband from me." Yeah, thanks, I feel much better now.