RESPECT

My father had a brain hemorrhage some years ago. He's now 86, and dependent on help from nurses, who come to his home five times a day. They are underpaid, not well educated and always in a hurry.
If my father is talking to me on the phone or hasn't finished eating his dessert, he has to stop at once. "Move, hurry, straighten up," they're shouting, not unlike an army sergeant to his hopeless recruits.
We all feel humiliated by the way my father is belittled.
He is not senile, he is not used to being bossed around. He is and has always been a very polite, gentle...and wise person.
He never was much of a talker, that is, if he did not have anything of importance to say or tell.
Chatting or smalltalk was never his style.
Now he needs more time to formulate his thoughts. That makes the nurses believe he's not so bright anymore.
My husband has always been on the same wavelength as my father. They have never stopped to like or respect one another.
Today my father took a long look at my husband's jogging suit.
"Nike", he read. "Nike of Samothrace," he added.
Gunnar looked the words up in the encyclopedia, and they both had a nice talk about the goddess of victory, whose artful elaborated statue is displayed in France.
At the end of the day;
we became somewhat wiser, renewed our somewhat blur knowledge of the Greek Antique, and my father regained some of his self respect.