I walked into work early and saw that Stan was visiting with his mom and brother in the rec area. His brother is retarded, repeats himself a lot. He was standing at the pool table, rolling one ball into another, trying to hit them into the holes and screaming "I got it!" and looking around to see if anyone had seen the noble deed. His mother is really fucking odd. It seems that after the butcher knife fiasco, she's going to press charges. I guess she figures this will teach him a lesson. You can't just go around attacking your mom with a butcher knife and expect to get away with it. I guess to make up for that fact, she comes and visits him daily, brings him food. I'd no stomach to talk to her, so I quickly said hi and walked on.

After cross-shift, I walked onto the unit and checked all the doors in the hallway for lockage. Then I opened all the kid's rooms to make sure they weren't messy and to see where everyone was. Elmo's room was a wreck. It amazes me that he doesn't understand that he has no family anymore, no home, and that all his worldy possessions are at the hospital. You have 5 shirts, and 3 pairs of pants. Why not keep them nice?

I walked into his room and saw that everything was strewn about - blankets on the floor, clothes wadded up in the corner, reeking of piss. I told him to clean it up quick before my coworkers saw it. This is called staff splitting - throwing more blame on other staff - but it works well.

The Music Therapist arrived and he gave out plastic streamers to the kids and played lots of rap music for the kids to dance to. Directly after this, the kids sat in the dayroom and talked nonstop. Us staff stood behind them, arms crossed, in silence, just to see how long it would take them to be quiet. They never hushed up. We finally deduced that Elmo and Rab were the ones who were being the most disruptive, and sent them to their rooms to chill out a bit. A chill out = five minutes of being quiet and calm on your bed. Elmo was pissed, slammed his door when he went.

Five minutes later, Rab was on his bed quiet and calm, so I called him out. I then went to Elmo's room to see that he was standing on his roommate's dresser. I reminded him of what he should be doing - quiet, calm, bed. He scowled at me.

A few minutes later, I was in the nurse's station doing some filing and paperwork. A cowoker was walking by, a mission in her step. "Elmo shit in his room." she mumbled as she quickly passed.

"What...?" but she'd already walked by. Imagine my frown, because I sincerely can't explain it.

She entered the nurse's station again a few minutes later with disinfectant in her hand, pulling 2 pairs of gloves out of a fresh box and walked out.

Once I was done filing, I walked out of the nurse's station to see that Elmo was walking past. He had gloves on, hands full of something dark. It smelled terrible. All the children in the dayroom were holding their noses with their fingers. The staff were screaming "NO ELMO. NO ELMO ELMO ELMO." He calmly continued walking, to the dayroom trashcan, and tossed something in. The staff stopped screaming at him, too shocked for words, I suppose. He turned around. His gloves hands were smeared brown. "What?" he asked.

The entire dayroom stank. I had to take the trash out immediately. My coworker later came and told me exactly how Elmo had done it. After I'd come to his room and saw him standing on the dresser and told him that he still had five more minutes, he'd become angry and just...shat in the corner. He took a pair of his roommate's underwear and put it over the top of the shit, proof that his roommate had done it.

He swore up and down that he hadn't done it. "My roommate did it." He tried to look inoocent. His roommate is Stan. Stan had been visiting the entire time with his crazy mother and retarded brother.

Oh the hilarity.