Rookie

My dad spoke about how the word "rookie" has taken on a new meaning the other day and I thought I would communicate this to y'all. When he first arrived at the rehab facility he was talking up the nurses, smiling as he was wheeled or walked down the hallway, ready to revolutionize the attitude of the other seemingly down-trodden patients. He talked of how he wanted to return to the rehab center once he was released to be a volunteer to lift the patients spirits. He told us stories to cheer us and played the part of the happy patient for all of his visitors.
Well now the word "rookie" has come to mean something new to him. He now realizes that the patients he thought he would some day cheer were really looking at him and shaking thier heads thinking rookie. The smile he thought he would wear as a pemanent ficture started to turn upside down more often and the challenges and the day-today of the facility started to wear him down. He had been a rookie all right, unaware of the validity of the feelings of the other less-than-always-optomistic patients.
It is not that he is now depressed or unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but now he is more realistic and taking things a day at a time. He is dealing with the reality of his feelings and growing from them rather than masking them. And I know he is now part of the group that shakes their head at the new guy and thinks "rookie!"

(my dad said all of this is a joking manner but it is hard to add that tone in writing: the point is that you never know until you've been there)