exceptionnoted

In the days before television dinners and Twitter mobile, people entertained themselves by talking to other people–in person and for hours at a time.  For children born in the twenty-first century, this may sound strange, even torturous, but it really happened.  And as I recall, it was something that all who experienced it . . . enjoyed.

As a boy, I remember going to my grandma’s house and hearing countless episodes of how she learned to drive a buggy, parallel park, and reside in a collegiate boarding house for women. As strange as those things were to me, they were also deeply interesting. As we drank cheap ‘pop’—it was in Michigan—and ate cookies and ice cream, my family gave full attention to my octogenarian grandmother whose hospitality displaced my adolescent need for ‘cool.’