Branson's Best

Well, as I stated last week, I was going to Branson, Entertainers pasture. As it appears many want to be and many has beens are performing in Branson. Although, that is not always the truth, it is generally a correct statement.

My goal in going to Branson was to play chaueffer to my mother-in-law and her best friend who had flown out to visit. My wife and I became the tour guides, chaueffers, seeing eye dogs and much more. The trip, was fun, entertaining, interesting and challenging.

You see my mother and law and her friend both have macular degeneration which has over the past few years gradually diminished their eyesight. It is now to a point that both can generally see, but have trouble with the details. Driving is out of the question, especially long distances.

Well, we started with the Branson Belle, an entertaining ShowBoat ride across the lake. Little did we know that this lunch show/trip was going to be an outing for about 300 junior high kids. My first thought was - oh no!. However, the kids were very well behaved and became fairly entertaining as the jived and jumped to music from an error that they did not understand.

The humor on this trip was when one of my ladies saw some of the children being signed to by an adult. The lady stated in a loud voice "oh look - they must be blind." We got a big laugh out of that as she discovered what she had said. But you see these ladies are in their 80's and for a minute she did not even realize what she had said.

The rest of the trip was shopping at the outlet malls with my wife being their clothes tag reader, their aid in dressing and trying on clothes and their confidant in deciding if the sandal fit or didn't fit. She took this with a patience and understanding that became ever more difficult as the trip went on.

The two ladies took in two more shows with us simply chaueffering to and from the show and being sure that they knew exactly where we would be standing after the show. For you see, if they could not find us after the show, it was very similar to having a lost child. They would revert back to that fear and lack of understanding that we would have as a child and it would become a problem.

However, the shows went without a hitch and we made the trip back to Arkansas with very few problems. One thing that I did notice, however, that sometimes with age comes rudeness. Without thinking these lovely ladies would say things with in ear range of people that were very tacky. With this my wife and I found ourselves being very polite and overly so, in a manner of thinking that this might be compensating for the perceived rudeness.

My prayer today - is Lord let me grow old gracefully, but maybe I should pray, Dear Lord just dont let me get old!