By Harry Glazer
Parker’s Day Club at Home visits four Middlesex County senior residences each week and provides four hours a day of creative, interactive, and fun activities to stimulate the minds, bodies, and imaginations of senior citizens. The sole staff person and program manager, Laurie Peters, is a dynamo with a singular focus – to engage with all the people she serves and add joy to their lives. In the last week of August, Laurie celebrated the end of summer in each of the residences with an island-themed party, complete with non-alcoholic Pina Coladas, a blind taste test of foods from the islands, and fun games.
One of the games they played was ‘Tacky Tourist,’ in which each member of a team had to go to one table and put on a button down shirt, a lei, hat, sunglasses, and (pretend to apply) suntan lotion, then go to another table and take off all the ‘vacation’ items. The team whose members dressed and discarded the summer clothes the quickest won. As you can see from this photo, Laurie (in the white shirt) and her party guests had a grand ole time.