agmg,
Sorry, I did not mean to imply that you were being deliberately insensitive.
The thing is that this picture illustrates a real problem for a lot of families with elders who grew up when there were no plastic items in the kitchen.
Now, with the dementia which can occur with age and for other reasons, many are losing recent memories and are operating with a world view from when they were quite young.
This happened with my Mom who got breast cancer and who we thought had dodged the bullet with a double mastectomy and therefore had no chemotherapy or other unpleasant treatments.
Yes, the cancer was gone and did not recur.
But unfortunately, it is my belief that a mistake was made with the anesthesia during her operation and she started showing signs of dementia after the surgery. Unlike what the medical industry would like people to believe, this was not a temporary condition and continued to worsen.
I think she would have preferred the chemotherapy had she know what was going to happen.
Anyway, I found myself to be her caregiver as this progressed.
One day while she was napping, I made a quick run to the store while I could.
When I returned, I opened the front door and found the interior of the house to be pitch black in the middle of the day.
It was full of extremely black smoke.
I made my way to the kitchen and noticed first that the ceiling light was just a very dim glow and that there was fire in the electric oven and its door was open.
As I made my way to the patio door to open it and clear the smoke, I found my Mom on the floor next to the door where she had fallen trying to get out.
Luckily, it was a poor quality door with a lot of air leakage at the bottom and here face was right up against the air leak so she had been able to breath due to the combination of being below most of the smoke and having fresh air coming under the door.
It turned out that she had awakened while I was gone and had decided to heat up some burritos under the broiler in the oven.
Unfortunately, she chose to put them on a plastic pan which was also too large to let the oven door close. I think that there were also some other plastic items in the oven also but it was hard to tell what from the remains.
Mostly, I just wanted to point out to the younger members here that all is not always as it seems. You see, believe it or not, not only were there no computers or TVs when many of your grandparents grew up, there was also no plastic or any of the items usually formed from it these days.
If someone is living with a world view where such things do not exist, their actions can not be understood by someone who has no knowledge of that world.
