Bon Air Week 3

This week I felt like it was the first week going to Bon Air again. Without Professor Dolson there as a sort of buffer/facilitator, I worried that we wouldn’t be able to get a lot done with the residents. It happened to be the opposite, however, because we got a lot of one on one time with our partners. The residents were already in the library when we got there, so we were able to dive right in and share stories almost immediately.

I’ve noticed that Christians’ stories are always very short. He basically just gives the main idea of what his story is about. For example this time when asked about his “best day ever” he simply said. That was when I got to meet my grandma for the first time. This week I decided to keep asking questions about his story to get a little more out of him. I asked him what he did with his grandma that day, what he liked most about her, and how long she stayed with him. I was able to learn that we are both extremely family oriented. His family is everything to him, and he seemed overjoyed that he was able to see them yesterday (there was a “family engagement” day on Sunday where families of the residents were able to come, spend time with them, and see the facility.) In fact he couldn’t stop talking about what he was able to do with his family the other day. Christian also often talks about how much he loves his baby niece when I’m with him. She came up in both stories tonight and has come up before during previous visits. Something that I didn’t know that I learned tonight, however, is that his “sister-in law” is his brother’s girlfriend and is only sixteen years old. I tried to hide my shock when I heard this, but I’m sure I didn’t do a good job. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have a two month old baby at only sixteen years old.

Something I’ve observed is that Christian is a very caring individual when it comes to children. He adores his baby niece and he mentioned when we were talking about State Fairs, that he often wins prizes to give to little kids.

Christian seems to have trouble sitting still, which is very different from the other residents. From what I’ve seen, most of the guys sit pretty still, almost stoic in their chairs. Christian on the other hand is constantly shifting his weight, moving his arms, and wiggling in his chair.

Christian also said a couple of times tonight under different occasions that he likes to keep to himself and mind his own business. I see this as partially a good thing, especially since he mentioned there is at least one fight in the facility a day. The downside to this is that he also said that he doesn’t open up easily to people. He prefers to keep his business to himself. On the other hand, when I mentioned that he should start writing down whatever stories he might want to publish in our final product, he asked if he could write down “street stories.” I look forward to hearing/reading those stories next week.