Aging Father Struggling To Keep Family’s Personal Failings Straight

DELRAY BEACH, FL—Attributing the recent drop-off in cognition to his advanced age, relatives of Arnold Simmons told reporters Monday that the 74-year-old was now noticeably struggling to keep the personal failings of all his family members straight. “It’s so sad hearing this once-vibrant man call my brother Peter an out-of-work bum when he’s always been so sharp at recognizing Peter as a workaholic who ignores his family, and it’s actually my brother Rob who sits around all day living off the settlement from his car accident two years ago,” said Julie Neidermeyer, Simmon’s eldest daughter, who noted that her father has always been “sharp as a whip” about the family’s foibles, flaws, past mistakes, and embarrassments nobody had thought about in years. “The hardest part is how quickly he’s going. Just last Christmas, dad was reminding everyone that I was the one who dropped out of college in my second semester, but this year, he wouldn’t stop accusing my sister, an alcoholic cardiologist, of never getting her degree.” Neidermeyer added that all she could do was listen as her father railed against his emotionally distant, absentee dad before gently reminding him that he was actually describing himself.