This past week, I joined a local gym for the first time since I've moved to Tulsa. It's a great little gym connected to a hospital with all of your basic gym needs such as weights, cardio equipment, etc., but the best thing about this gym is that it has a hot tub!
Hot tubs are like the perfect combination of a bathtub and a swimming pool; it's hot like a bath tub (minus soap), but big (and public) like a swimming pool. Hot tubs are also great because you get to experience awkwardness at its finest. I mean, what's better than sharing a bubbling pool of luke warm water with half naked strangers who may or may not be the same gender as you and may or may not be twice your age. It's great not only because it's awkward, but also because you never know what kind of good conversations you're going to over hear.
Today, during my hot tub session, I walked in on two older gentlemen, each over the age of 70, having a discussion about their loss of vision over the years. One was a doctor from Philly and the other was a Tulsa kid, born and raised and a big fan of the Temple University basketball team. Now, you may be thinking, "Why is he peppering in all of this information for backstory? What's the point?"
Here's the answer, I don't really have a point other than the fact that there is just something so cool to me about listening to older generations discuss life with one another. Have you ever just sat around and listened to older people talk? It's so enlightening. These two guys never got around to asking me how my vision was, if I'd been to Philly or how I thought Temple would fair in the NCAA tournament this year, but that didn't matter. I was more than happy just listening and they were more than happy just sharing. It was like my own hot tub time machine. I don't want to call this eavesdropping; I want to call it learning. It's not like I really learned any super valuable life lesson from their talk, but I did learn some of their story, and that in itself is cool and worth it.
Hearing and knowing a piece of someone's story is a special thing. After all, a person's story is something we all have, yet something none of us have in common. Stories from older generations are even better because they're old stories to new ears with new applications. If you haven't before, sit down and listen to some old stories, even if it takes eavesdropping in a hot tub.
-Cliff
Cliff's Note: You don't need a time machine or a hot tub to travel through time.