The skirt crisis

So it all started with the social worker calling my mom with a brilliant idea. There was a clothing sale happening at the care home and she thought that grandma could use a new skirt and she'd taken the liberty of finding a grey one in grandma's size. Would it be alright if she bought it for grandma?

I think mom was a little taken aback because we're all certain that this particular social worker is a little bit insane or mentally deficient, but at the time it sounded like a pretty good idea so she said yes. But as the case always seems to be, anything you agree to with that social worker never seems to turn out right.

In the weeks following that event, the skirt has become the centre a crisis of epic proportions, pulling in more people than I can count and no one knows why.

The social worker phoned about a week later to ask when we were going to come to giftwrap the skirt. Mom said that it was okay to just give it to grandma. The social worker proceded to argue with her that it would be nice if we wrapped it and gave it to her as a Christmas present, and that grandma would appreciate that.

Grandma would appreciate that? Perhaps the social worker wasn't aware, but grandma is precisely the kind of person who would throw all your presents haphazardly into garbage bags and call them wrapped, and the same person who ordered a personally engraved pen for me when I graduated, only to hand it to me with the words "I don't know what the hell this is!" She's not big on the formalities of polite gift giving.

But as the case is, the social worker is a hard person to argue with so eventually you give up. She's also an extremely irritating and persistent person, so in the two weeks since that event, she's phoned every three or four days, just to remind everyone that it's in her office. Would we like to come giftwrap it? No, why don't you just give it to her?

In the meantime, my aunt decides that we should take grandma out for dinner this Sunday and begins to arrange transportation and restaraunt reservations. She then phones the social worker to let her know of our plans. "You should come pick up the skirt," the social worker tells her, and my aunt has no idea what the hell she's talking about. My aunt phones my mom.

Around the same time, my dad is at a community event and is approached randomly by the social worker, who tells him that she's got grandma's skirt and if she had known he was going to be there, she would have brought it to give to him. He has no idea what the hell she's talking about either. He phones mom.

Mom phones the social worker to tell her that she should give the skirt to grandma so she would have something nice to wear to dinner. The social worker finally agrees, and takes it to grandma. Grandma didn't know anything about the skirt either, and it doesn't seem like the social worker did a good job explaining it to her because it made her confused, angry and defensive.

The woman began to rifle through her closet, telling her that she was picking out an outfit for her to wear to dinner. It was Wednesday at the time, and dinner was on Sunday so grandma was angry that this woman was going through her clothes and confused as to what day it was. Grandma panicked and called everyone she knew to ask what was going on, and it took a long conversation on the phone with my mom to calm her down.

And in the middle of it all was the skirt. Hopefully it's sorted out now.