Hello, I'm a flower

Daddy continues to amuse and amaze me, but this week I was visiting and I was not amused. They'd given him a cup of pudding for an afternoon snack and he was attempting to eat it by sucking on the end of the white plastic spoon. He had mistaken it for a straw. I wasn't upset with the staff for not catching this, and I checked later to find out that when he's given something to eat and he's just awakened from a nap, he'll do this, thinking it's the straw he drinks with at meals since they have real metal ware to eat with then.

I get him straightened out and he devours the pudding (he devours everything placed in front of him) and then I asked the question I always ask, "Daddy, do you know who I am?"

His blue eyes brighten and twinkle (yes, my dad's eyes twinkle), and he laughs at me and nods. I have to press the issue to get a verbal response. Obviously he knows me but that day, I was a flower.

Just one more step down the spiral ladder of his mental capacity, or so I thought. Coupled with the pudding incident, I wasn't amused.

But I should have been amazed. Recounting this incident to a man who knew my dad well, he brought up the obvious solution. "What were you wearing?"

A shirt with flowers on it. Black and white flowers and, as Daddy is color blind, of course, I was a flower.