So, Josh and I spent the first week of 2010 in Puerto Rico. I was amazing and we had the time of our lives. We stayed at a swanky hotel right on the water and enjoyed every second of it, well almost every second of it.
One day, we decided to head off on an adventure of sorts. When I got to the hotel lobby I decided I should use the restroom before we left. I was washing my hands and as I finished up and an old Puerto Rican lady was brought in in a wheel chair. The lady pushing her wheeled her into the handicap stall and closed the door. I continued washing my hands when I heard some whimpering behind me. I look up and in the mirror, behind me (the door was never locked so it was wide open) I see this frail little lady standing, slowly falling backwards, panicking because she can't catch herself and she is going to smack her head on the bathroom floor. So, I ran in there and grabbed her from behind, hooking my arms under hers. I start to panic because I don't know how long I can hold her. So, I start to yell for help. There were other women in the bathroom and no one came to help. I'm pretty sure they were Spanish speaking, but I'm also pretty sure that when someone yells HELP! in a bathroom, no matter what language you speak, you check to see what is going on. I can see the people in the restroom leave. So I continue to yell for help, and still, no one comes. At this point, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get peed on if I don't get this lady to the toilet. So, I try to scoot the helpless old lady about two feet back to the toilet but I am behind her so that didn't work so well. She had her depends half way down and started to pee, getting it on her skirt, soaking her diaper, and the floor. Luckily, I was not splashed by her. I got her close enough to the toilet that I was able to then scoot to the side and push her back from that angle, which didn't work so well, but at least she was part way on the toilet. She had caught her balance enough sitting on the toilet, so I went out to look for her helper, whom I was furious with at this point. How could she just leave her in there, knowing she couldn't use the bathroom by herself? The lady was no where to be found. I looked for a few minutes and decided I needed to go back in and should help the lady get back in her chair.
A bit later, I come strolling out of the bathroom almost in tears over this whole ordeal, pushing this poor old lady in her pee soaked skirt, and don't know what to do with her. I then found Josh, my Spanish speaking partner, and through him was finally able to communicate with the lady. He was asking her all sorts of questions about where her party was, where she needed to be, trying to get any information out of her. Her answers weren't making any sense so we decided to ask the bellman if he knew what we should do. He informed us that she is a local homeless lady who gets random people to take her into the hotel to use the lobby bathroom every now and then. He wasn't too fond of her and told us to just leave her. So, we asked her again where she needed to go and she started pointing. We took her to the corner she was pointing to and that was that. The 'helper' I thought she was with, that I was so mad at, turned out to be a confused soul just like me.
And that is the story of when I almost got peed on by a homeless lady.
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