Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before!

I read something one time that I try to remember whenever I am having a conversation with someone and they start to tell me something they’ve told me before.

What I read was especially in regard to older people and their fond memories.  The writer said something I had never thought about before … that you are giving a person a gift each time you listen to one of their stories, when it is obviously one they enjoy telling.

I don’t know about you, but for me, there has always been a trigger in my brain that is tripped every time I begin to hear something I’ve heard before.  And my automatic response is to say, “Yes, I’ve heard that.”  And that’s fine, if what the person is telling you is the weather forecast or what day school will start this year.

But I really do try to remember not to stop  someone who is obviously enjoying the re-telling of a favorite story.

And since I am 64 years old with not only a disorganized but poor memory and have written 737 posts, which aren’t terribly well-organized in my blog either, I guess I’m fortunate that I can’t hear you saying, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before!”  if I re-tell a story here.

In fact, I guess we’re both blessed that way … you can just skip that post without worrying about hurting my feelings … and I can enjoy retelling the story without ever knowing that you weren’t listening!

This post was inspired by my frequent attempts to remember if I’ve posted about a subject before … and by my own fond memories of sitting at my father’s bedside the many times he was in the hospital and listening to his great, often funny stories of his childhood.

A broken strand of beads

 

    Uncle Jim, me and Daddy (making me laugh!)

Daddy and his brother were “latch-key kids” long before they were called that.  Both of their parents worked, so after school they pretty much did what they wanted.

One of the boys’ favorite things to do was to sneak a ride on the back of a trolley car, and then jump off before they got caught.

But the police in the area got wise to them.  And one of the times they pulled that trick, they were caught and taken to the police station and put in a cell!  This was in the early 1920’s when, apparently, the police felt perfectly comfortable putting two kids in a cell for a few hours without even bothering to notify their parents, in hopes of putting a little scare in them.

So while the boys were cooling their heels in a jail cell and I’m sure were supposed to be contemplating the error of their ways, they happened to notice some pink beads on the floor of the cell.  They thought they were really pretty so they picked them up and put them in their pockets to give to their mother!  They were sure she would like them.

After the boys had been in the cell for a little while the police figured they had been taught their lesson, so they let them go.  But of course with a stern warning about what would happen if they jumped the trolley again!

Later, when their mother got home, the boys showed her the beads they had found (of course, not mentioning where they were found), and she agreed that they were pretty and thanked them for bringing them home to her.

So the boys went off to their room feeling pretty good about not only making points with Mom for bringing her the beads (and they adored their mom, so liked to make her happy), but also that even though they had had a “close encounter” with the police and spent some time in a jail cell, Mom and Dad would never know about! 

Meanwhile, their mom had sat down at the kitchen table and was laying out the beads in a line to start re-stringing them, but she quickly realized the beads weren’t all the same size — they were graduated — meant to go from smaller at the clasp to the largest in the middle.  Unfortunately, that meant that it was very obvious there were some missing and that would keep the necklace from looking good.

So she called to the boys to come back down to the kitchen, showed them the problem, and asked them to go back wherever they found the beads to see if they could find the rest!

Busted!  They stammered around enough that Mom realized there was something they didn’t want to tell her and it didn’t take her long to get it out of them that they couldn’t go back to look for the rest of the beads — because they found them in a jail cell!  So, they ended up being in more trouble at home than they had been with the police — just because of some pretty beads they thought their mom would like.

Daddy and Uncle Jim grew up to be upstanding citizens.  And the only reason I know this and other stories about Daddy’s childhood is that for the last few years of his life he spent alot of time in the hospital, and I spent alot of time sitting there with him, just keeping him company.  That’s when he sometimes passed the time telling me stories about his childhood that I had never heard before.  And, oh how he enjoyed re-living those long ago days when he and his brother were young and healthy and a little bit wild.