This week I had a chance to talk with a class of eighth-graders about the people who live in assisted living and how once upon a time these folks were 14-year-olds too. I asked them to raise their hand if they thought they might live to at least 90, and was impressed by how many hands went up in the air.
A few days earlier, I did some informal research by having coffee with a couple of our senior living residents. I asked if they remembered being in eighth grade. Madeline shook her head and told me those days were all a blur for her now at 80. Her 86-year-old friend Anita began listing the names of all of her favorite teachers and what they taught and why she remembered them. We were both impressed. I asked if they ever thought back then that they would reach the age they are now. They laughed and immediately said no, back then, they could have never imagined being this old. I asked if they could go back in time and give their 8th-grade self any advice what would it be? “Don’t get married at 18,” Anita said quickly.
A couple of weeks ago, my 21-year-old niece drove down to Prescott to spend some time with us and also to work on a homework assignment for her anthropology class. She needed to interview her grandpa/my dad about his life for the project and she invited me to join her. They sat side-by-side on the couch, 60 years between them, as she scrolled through her questions on her laptop, her cell phone on the table videotaping their interview. I enjoyed watching her politely ask questions and make notes on his answers. Sometimes I’d toss in a few of my own questions, just to draw out a story I knew he would share with her. He surprised me with a few stories I’d never heard before, after all these years of being his daughter.
My dad told her he grew up in a time when kids were seen but not heard. Every Sunday his family would have dinner with his German grandparents and he and his brother would sit on the living room couch for hours, quietly doing nothing while the adults talked, and then eat at the dinner table without saying a word unless asked. He told her about walking miles to school each day to attend a one-room schoolhouse with kids in Kindergarten through eighth grade and a teacher who taught them all. How he didn’t imagine ever living to be 81, like he is now, or 97, like his mother.
As I listened to them talk, I thought about how women in his time rarely worked outside the home, or if they did, the job options were slim. My niece has so many options now. Or that grandchildren in his day didn’t have blue hair, a nose ring, creative tattoos, and the ability to learn about pretty much anything on the Internet.
My dad was born during World War 2 and remembers food rationing and the day their dog stole an unattended steak off the kitchen counter. He went to college with returning Korean War veterans and almost got drafted into Vietnam. My niece eats fast food whenever she wants as part of her college dining dollars. She grew up practicing active shooter drills in her high school classroom and experienced a terrifying lockdown because of a suspected gunman. I microwaved a lot of frozen dinners in college and got out of swimming class once because someone called in a bomb threat to our high school. I worried about the Soviet Union nuking the world before I made it into adulthood.
Our lives are all shaped by the places and times we grow up. I can’t imagine walking miles to sit in a one-room schoolhouse or training for active shooter drills in my junior high classroom. And it gives me hope that despite all the craziness that happens in our world each day, a bunch of Prescott eighth-graders raised their hands and said they can imagine living to be 90 years old. I wonder what stories they will share with their grandkids if they do?