Have I talked here about The Poisoner's Handbook? It's a crazy book about, um, poison, but one of my favorite things is how nearly any newly-discovered poison got turned into a beauty treatment, before they realized it was poison. Radioactive stuff was supposed to be good for you! And give your skin a luminous glow. Um, OK. Also, Marie Curie carried radium around in her skirt pocket! And died of radiation poisoning...

Burrell, I was thinking generally and certainly don't want to minimize anyone's experience. I don't think I could do what you did or my mother did and I'm in awe of people like you.

Allyson, I think I've heard something like that as a puzzler on Car Talk?

Consuela, I feel for you. My mom is heading down that path, and I really don't know what's going to happen. It's likely my sister will end up moving in with my parents at some point, but I don't know. My mom looked after her own mother for the last 7 years of my grandmother's life, and it was hard on my mom, as my grandmother would barely let her leave the house. After my grandmother died, my mom was all about going into a home, but as the possibility becomes more real, she won't even entertain leaving her house and I think ultimately she's going to fight against it. (Not that we're near there yet.) There's also the fact that my parent's house is in terrible condition, and if you say to them, hey, maybe you should fix your leaky basement, they both just say they're not going to be around for much longer, and why bother.

I've always heard the story with a child as the punchline. I'm working on an essay on what appears to be a sort of logical fallacy, a sort of polar opposite to Appeal to Authority.

The ignoramus in the comments section of any article on climate change who knows far more than the geodetic scientist because s/he read something once on the internet by an unknown source. And I wonder if these same people would consult a neurosurgeon if they needed brain surgery, or if they'd talk to a guy who once knew someone who hit their head. There's some sort of logic gap, and I don't know what it is, but I'm tying this truck tire legend into it.

Yeah, I remember seeing the tire thing as a question in a brain-teaser book when I was a kid. I thought it was clever and asked my dad the question, and he knew the answer right away and said that that puzzle had been around when he was a kid.

Have people heard this one?

A guy has a flat tire right next to a mental institution. He removes the bad tire and puts the lug nuts in the hubcap on the ground. Then he accidentally kicks the hubcap, sending the lug nuts down a storm sewer where he can't get them. While he stands around not knowing what to do, a resident of the mental institution comes over and tells him to take one lug nut off each of the other wheels, and use those to attach the spare tire.

The driver says something like, "Wow, how'd you know to do that?" and the guy says, "I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid."

I think I've also seen this in the form of a brain teazer (without the crazy guy).

Kristin, congratulations!

I'm pretty sure I had that bridge scenario as a brain-teaser in elementary school too - I've never heard anyone refer to it as a thing that actually happened.

I'm working on an essay on what appears to be a sort of logical fallacy, a sort of polar opposite to Appeal to Authority.

Ooh, I want to read this. I'd love to know if there's an official name for this phenomenon, and also if it can be killed with fire.

instead of trying to find a place for her to be comfortable before she was as far down the dementia path as she is now, we moved in with her, it was a mistake.

Gah. I'm so sorry, Dawn.

It's not like we didn't try to plan for this, either. We kept asking them about their long-term plans, referring them to some really nice long-term assisted living situations, inviting them to California, but there are so many personal issues there. They kept saying, "Not decrepit yet!" until they were and they'd run out of options.

If my mother had been willing to get therapy thirty years ago, to deal with her anxieties, much of this would have been avoided. But nope.

Would the Emperor's New Clothes work pretty much the same as the tire story to illustrate that?

I'm going to come down on Ginger's and Dawn's side of the question. Both my parents had that irrational fear of "the poor house", and made me promise them when I was in my twenties that they would never end up there.

We cared for my dad at home for eight years after his pyschotic break and resultant drugged to placid state. That is, H and I cared for him, and our teenagers helped, because Mom just went on with her life as she always had done, with Dad at the center of it, but basically doing what she wanted to do around his presence as a touchstone. He might have benefitted from the stimulation of other people and activities in a nursing home. He was always an outgoing, gregarious person. But isolated with Mom most of the day and with H and me and the kids at brief intervals for bathing and getting into and out of bed, and toileting, he had no outlet for interaction. He was desperately clingy for those times we were with him, but because it was unpleasant and painful for us to see him that way, we curtailed our time with him, or restricted it to just getting the unpleasantness over with.

I so very much regret not getting him into a facility. His last years would have been so much more interesting, he would have been so much more engaged and happy, and Mom would have had to learn to lump it.

She survived him for nearly twenty years, and it was only after a series of falls, hallucination episodes and obvious breaks with reality that I broke my word to her and got her into a nursing facility.

And she was incredibly happy. They spoiled her, which she had always craved and which I could not do, at least not adequately. Attention always meant more coming from not-family. She had no responsibilities, no chores, no worries over roof repair or storm damage or taxes (though we'd taken all those on, as long as she was *there* on the premises, she had to supervise). She could just look out the window or watch other people or doze and dream.

And not having to jump every time I heard a strange noise, to be on the alert for a fall or an urgent need at ungodly in the morning to discuss why I hadn't turned in my geography homework in fourth grade (she was cleaning out a drawer and found my report card. At ungodly o'clock), or helping her find the dog we'd had put to sleep two years before. The relief of constant vigilance was incredible. I was actually able to spend time with her and enjoy it. She was able to light up when I came into the room, and not have a list of grievances that I was supposed to resolve ASAP, or at least listen to her gripe about them till she ran down or got distracted.

Assisted living, or a good nursing facility, are godsends. And you should take advantage of them. This is your life, the only one you have. You owe your parents the best end-of-life experience you can provide. Most of the time, that's not being cared for in your home, or in a home you share with them. At least, not in my experience.