Never Thought You Could Meet Them, Did You?

Who have you met recently?

A guy that grew up next to Rasputin?

Cause the guy that wrote this article did. He was just minding his own business, eating a sandwich with his girlfriend, and this old man starts talking to him about his neighbor while he was growing up in Russia: Rasputin. How is that for an interesting chat over lunch?

It makes you think about how we go through every day in life meeting all of these people, and you never know where they came from. Who they’ve met. Who their grandparents are. These days, most people my age write off older people as boring or lacking in the wits department. But they’re the ones that have stories. They have history and knowledge that people my age can’t even fathom. They remember segregation and Kennedy being shot. They knew what it was like for the TV to stop playing shows at midnight.

This article just blew my mind, being the history nerd that I am (Mom was a history teacher for a long time; I got the bug from her). There was a man still alive in the 1950’s who witnessed Abe Lincoln being shot. Civil War widows still alive into the 21st century. We learn about all of these great historic figures growing up, and learn of them through text books and our teachers. No one thinks there can possibly still be any living person to tell the stories firsthand. Because they happened years ago. Like years and years and years.

Puts things a little more into perspective for me. I need to be asking more questions. What was it like to listen to Roosevelt’s newscast firsthand when he made the speech announcing the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Or what was it like to grow up without Fruit Loops? GASP! The horror! Yes, there might not be anyone NOW that is alive and witnessed Abe Lincoln being shot, but there are people that have witnessed many other parts of history, and before we know it, our chances of asking them will be gone. Then it will be our turn for kids to ask us where we were on September 11th, 2001. Or how we watched TV that wasn’t 3-D.

Point is, next time an old man sits down next to you, start asking questions before writing him off. Learn something.