National Day of Listening

[motherhubbard]

Today is the national day of listening.

http://www.nationaldayoflistening.org/

Have any of you listened to your loved ones tell a story today? Can any of you share a story with the rest of us?

[kratsayra]

I actually heard a lot of good family stories yesterday and the day before. But now I can't think of them. :eek:

I'm not sure if it is was a joke or real, but my grandfather was saying that when he and his siblings were young, during the depression, they each had a different strategy for how to get enough food at the dinner table. My grandfather took small portions at a time, so he could keep taking more after he finished each small portion and ate fast. But his brother would take one big portion to begin with. :rolleyes:

[Virgil]

Well, this is a bad day for such a day. Either people are busy shopping or hibernating avoiding going out to the mobs. I didn't spend much time with mom, who always seems to want to tell me stories, even when I don't feel like listening, which seems frequent these days. ;) I didn't tell my wife any stories and she didn't tell me any. Actually I think we yelled at each other today. :lol:

[papayahed]

Mom told me the story (she tells it every Thanksgiving) when she tried to get me to eat when I was little, she put a Twinkie, jello, and candy on my plate and said I had to eat one of them :rolleyes:- but I didn't :lol:.

[motherhubbard]

My husband told me about playing cards with his grandmother. He misses her.

My grand mother has been telling me about how she and my grandfather worked at the Japanese internment camps after Pearl Harbor. There were two or three camps here in Arkansas and my grandfather took care of ordering the supplies for the camps. I’m trying to get more out of her about the experience.

[kratsayra]

the other story that was really interesting . . . my grandmother was one of 4 siblings. She and her sister said that their mother, being so tired of having so many kids at home, lied about their ages so that she could send them off to school sooner (you had to be 6 to go to school, so they went when they were 5 b/c she lied about their year of birth). The oldest, their brother, got caught because a neighbor told on their mother. But she still altered the ages of the next two kids (my grandmother and her sister). They never got found out, but they both said they always lived in fear of being found out at school, whenever they had to fill out a form with their date of birth on it. :eek: