Hooverwood Indianapolis Adult Day Care Center By: Alex Hemmer

Today we went to volunteer at Hooverwood Indianapolis Jewish Adult Day Care Center. We were given a brief tour of the center and began to set up bingo! We brought residents to the activity room and helped them get started with their bingo cards.   A lot of the residents that I interacted with were more dependent and less responsive to conversation. Many residents were not that interested in actually playing bingo, but the activity got them out of their rooms and into a newer environment. I noticed that the staff at Hooverwood was a bit pushy with which residents were brought out to play. One women I was told to take to play bingo kept asking me to stop and I had a hard time determining who to listen to in that moment. This brought me to consider if I was doing her a favor by getting her out of her room, or a disservice by ignoring her request to stay. In the end she was happy to be in the bingo room (even though she slept through most of bingo) but bringing her there was a bit difficult.

Most of the table I sat at during bingo was disinterested and slept through most of the game. The gentleman next to me however played well and asked me lots of questions about our stay in Indiana. He wanted to know a lot about the Indy 500 and wanted all the details of our previous day. He also preferred traditional bingo rules, the rules we played was that you could only win with vertical in one round and only horizontal in another round. He kept getting bingo but not the way that the round required, this caused him a bit of confusion and irritation. Another lady I spoke with was extraordinarily happy to play bingo and requested that I make sure she yells bingo if she got it. It was refreshing to see such cheer brought to her eyes as we played the game.

               

 Later on we watched a movie called Gattaca which was a story about a dystopian society in which genetic modification is the norm. Conventionally conceived children were part of a lower class, since they were at a higher risk of developing medical problems or disabilities. The main character wanted to go to space and in order to do that he had to jump classes. The movie calls into question what we define as a disability and the role of technology in potentially eradicating disability. Do we want to eradicate all disabilities? Would that necessarily be better for society or would we lose something else? Would we lose humanity in that process? One of the problems the main character faced was lack of 20/20 vision. In today’s society glasses are a common part of many people’s lives and are not considered a major disability. In the movie however glasses are seen as a clear marker for the lower disabled class as it marks an imperfection in the genome.  The society in the movie was obsessed with perfection and genetics, for example it was common for partners to check one another’s DNA sequence behind their backs. The perfectionism that was present in this society was inherently toxic and caused unrest among both the able-bodied and the disabled classes. In a class I recently took we talked a lot about perfectionism and I learned that if “you do not learn to fail, you will fail to learn.” Failure and imperfection is a natural part of life and an inability to accept that will only hurt you further.

Finally we spent the evening checking businesses in downtown Indianapolis for accessibility. We rated businesses based on the AXS Mapathon. Most of the businesses that I encountered had wide enough doors and no steps in front. Most of the stores did not have a bathroom which is unfortunate, however the Starbucks that we encountered had a very accessible bathroom. The bathroom had a wide door, was spacious, had two support bars, and low sinks. I began to notice a lot more accessibility features as we went through businesses with this alternative lens. I thought that overall Indianapolis seemed like a very accessible city, but I am interested in seeing how our hometown of College Park compares.