Aunt Tim

My mother has an aunt, my great-aunt, that lives in a small town in western Oklahoma. Occasionally, my mother goes to visit her Aunt Tim (no one knows why she is named Tim, but she doesn’t seem to realize it’s a strange name for a woman). Generally we dislike making this trip, as it is long, boring, un-scenic, and once we arrive, there is still nothing to do. The small town she lives in has but one restaurant, and if you don’t make it by sun-down, then it may be closed. As a matter of fact, the whole town pretty much closes at 5:00pm. The only thing there is to do, is to make the 45 minute trek to the nearest decent size town, Elk City. And in case you were wondering, any place, where you look forward to going to a town named Elk City, must suck.

On my mother’s most recent trip, Aunt Tim scheduled a doctor’s appointment in Elk City (which was probably overdue), because she needed my mom to drive her. Aunt Tim is a tiny, 88 year old, 4’10” woman, who can barley see and barley hear. Yet she will drive herself around town, in her over sized Lincoln Continental. Fortunately, she knows not to try and drive herself across any great distances, or to travel at highway speeds.

On a doctor visit like this, my mom serves the roll of interpreter. The doctor, or nurse, or whoever, will speak to my great-aunt, and then she will look at my mother and wait for my mother to repeat, sometimes word for word, what was said so that Aunt Tim can understand it. After they enter the doctor‘s office, the receptionist gives them the standard forms to be filled out and tells Aunt Tim she will need to provide her insurance card after filling out the form. After they take a seat in the waiting room, and mother starts filling out the form, Aunt Tim turns to her and says, “What did she say?” My mom explains to her that she will need to show her insurance card.
“Oh,” says Aunt Tim, “I can never understand those people. The Mexicans.”

My mom, flushed face, sinks down in her chair, as this was said loud enough for everyone in the waiting room to hear. Not to mention that the receptionist was not Mexican, but white.

Later in the doctor’s office, the nurse says something, which my mother then has to translate, and while the nurse is still in the room, Aunt Tim says, “I can’t understand her, she must be speaking Spanish.” The nurse, like the receptionist, was also white, and definitely not speaking Spanish.

Finally, the doctor came and check her out. And it was a long ordeal, since me mother had to translate virtually everything the doctor said. When the doctor left, and they were preparing to go, Aunt Tim says, “He had a funny accent too. Too many foreigners.” Needless to say, he did not have a funny accent, nor was he a foreigner. I am starting to suspect that my Aunt Tim may be a racist. And now that I think about it, she did once refer to Oklahoma City as “Nigger Town”, and she once warned us not to go to Love’s gas stations, because “that’s where the hoodlums and blacks hang out.”

It also, makes no sense to us why she can apparently hear my mom, but can’t hear anyone else. But despite her little quirks (like racism) she is, for the most part, a sweet old lady.