The sharpest (tongued) 99-year-old west of the Mississippi

The Dryden family earlier this week as we leave for a
hard hat tour of the new building at mom's assisted living facility.
From left: Tom, Ruby and her walker, sister Judy and brother Jerry.

This week, as I've written in my last two posts, my brother, sister and I have been cleaning out our 99-year-old mother's house. Mom has sold it and moved to an assisted living facility.

Our mother, Ruby, is hyper-sensitive about her age. She says people who meet her assume she's a doddering idiot, which she most emphatically is not. She reads constantly (non-fiction only), keeps her TV tuned to CNBC all day to stay abreast of the market (and doesn't watch it otherwise), and, in the six months she has been in assisted living, has won all but one of the monthly duplicate bridge tournaments she has entered. She's been a Mac user since the mid-1990s, and stays in touch with her far-flung family by email and Facebook.

When it came to culling through her library, Mom designated me as her book editor. Specifically, she asked me to go through her 700 plus books to determine which she should take with her, which should be donated to the local library and which should be given to the library at the assisted living facility. After much consideration, I chose 70 or so biographies to give to the assisted living library, and they were delivered earlier this week.

Today I was visiting mom and suggested we take a stroll down the long hallway from her apartment to the library to visit some of her books. So we did.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a resident volunteer, a distinguished-looking lady of 80 or so who, you could just tell, had been a librarian in her previous life. She thanked mom for the books and said she and her fellow volunteers had already classified them and placed them on the shelves.

As they were talking, I spotted what appeared to be a computer monitor at a desk. "Do you have Internet here?" I asked the librarian. I had been under the impression that the facility doesn't have Internet access because few, if any, of the elderly residents, other than Ruby, have any idea what the Internet is.

"No," she said. "That's a microfiche reader. Nobody here has Internet, but I hear it will be available in the new building."  (Mom has reserved a larger apartment in a new building that will open this fall.) 

"I have it now," my mother told her. "My grandsons gave it to me for my birthday. It's a satellite link."

"You have Internet?" the librarian asked incredulously.

"Of course," mom replied. "I need it for email and to follow the market."

The librarian could hardly believe it.

"I don't suppose you read books on a Kindle?" the librarian asked, in an attempt to convince herself  this tiny old lady couldn't possibly understand the latest technology. "They say it's now possible to order books you want to read and have them delivered to an electronic reader almost instantly."

"I wouldn't have one," mom replied.

"I know," the librarian said, nodding her head in agreement. "There's something about holding a book in your hands. I can't imagine reading any other way."

"No," mom said. "When I move to the new building and have wireless, I'm getting an iPad. If you have one of those, you don't need a Kindle because you can read your books on the iPad. The Kindle's obsolete."

With that, mom turned her walker around, and strolled out.

"Did you see how condescending she was?" mom asked.

"Yeah. But you set her straight," I replied.

Mom flashed a wicked smile and, after making a stop at the movie theater to swipe some popcorn, we headed back to her apartment.