Okay Ellie Mae
Arrive at her door, ring the bell, wait, wait, wait, wait. I hear dragging from inside. Finally the door opens. "Hi I'm xxxx, here to go over yyyyy with you" I say and she stares at me as though I'm speaking another language. Then I could
see her brain click into gear and she lets me in. She had to drag some boxes out of the way to let me in. TV is BLARING so loud the walls are reverberating.
The house is FULL of stuff. Full. There's a pathway thru the house to the various rooms, which are also FULL of stuff. To the ceiling in every room. We
stand at the kitchen counter to discuss what I'm there about. Every 2 or 3 minutes she heads to the TV remote, says "I gotta turn this down", fiddles with the remote (nothing happens to the volume) and says "Oh that's better". Every 2 or 3 minutes. For my entire visit.
There's a TV program on, and she likes one of the actors. So every 5 minutes or so she says "Oh look, there's ????, I need to get his picture" and grabs her digital camera, gets a message that the batteries aren't working, and says "oh I need new batteries". EVERY 5 MINUTES! For my entire visit.
As I speak with her, I can
literally see her brain working and not working. I am asking her questions, and can tell from her replies that she is NOT answering me, but the voices in her head (or something). Totally inappropriate responses to every question I ask. And she's still futzing with the TV remote AND the digital camera. What should have taken me 30 minutes ended up taking 1.5 hours, and I'm not convinced I got accurate info.
As I was leaving she told me she knew I was Italian. Uh, okay.
Really, the whole experience made me think of some of the problems people experience on ebay. This lady doesn't have access to a computer, but there are, I fear, millions like her who do! Thank goodness she is married, so her husband can keep an eye on her, make sure she's fed, clothed and such.