A Conversation with an Older Man

“I wonder what our children could learn from old men sitting on park benches.”

– a lot, an awful lot, and they’re missing out.

I never met either of my grandfathers when I was old enough to remember, but when I was about eight and my little brother around four, we moved next door to an older couple. The woman was a retired school teacher, and the man tended the biggest backyard garden I have ever seen. They treated all the neighbor kids as adopted grandchildren, but my brother especially took to the old gentleman. He spent hours helping him with the garden, hearing all the history and wisdom our own grandfather never got to tell him. It’s so important for children to be able to learn from older people!

@Russel You asked „Why are so many people unable to just accept kindness, without looking for a darker motive?”

I’m pretty sure that the answer is televison. When I zap through shows, kindness seems to be the least important aspect of human interaction. And selfless kindness even more so. It’s always about mending something (drama) or often shown as having a hidden agenda.

And kindness makes bad drama – something television thrives on. That and violence and fear.

Wait a minute… I can’t believe I just said it was “Leave it to Beaver.” I totally meant to say DENNIS THE MENACE!! That’s what I get for trying to comment without having had my morning coffee yet, LOL

When I was in High School I wanted to visit someone in a nursing home, so my parents found a place nearby and I went through the necessary screening and was matched with an older gentleman named Mr. Byrd. I would usually go once a week and we would just sit and talk for a couple of hours. He had family, but not nearby; he loved the outdoors, especially snowmobiling, and he was one of the greatest listeners too. He was an amazing man and I was privileged to know him. May all of our children have that same privilege.

Another thing I love about that episode – the dad didn’t even know where to look for Beaver. He had to ask Wally where he liked to hang out!

My mom has to tell my dad over and over, not to flirt with babies, which he loves. He’s got some dementia issues, and it is really sad, that he doesn’t remember the reason why he can’t.

Thank you, Lauren, for sharing your experience.

In my 20s, I used to buy a Happy Meal (when I just wanted a small snack) and give the toy to the nearest little kid who looked unhappy. Now in my 40s, I’ve stopped trying to give the toys away, as I get glared at far more than smiled at. By the time I’m sitting on a bench in the park, I assume it’ll be just me, since none of the kids will be allowed in such a place.

Lauren, you did a wonderful thing for your kids, an old man, and society. I think, one by one, moments like these are what is takes to help to heal society.

I never got experience with old men on park benches growing up. I was raised with “strange danger,” and there weren’t many men left on park benches even in the ’90s. Sadly the fear then was nothing compared to now. Once I got over ‘stranger danger’, I talked to lots of folks working in front yards. I didn’t know how much my parents were aware of the people I chatted with until I got married and they threw a party. Among the guys I chatted up that, just couldn’t miss the party were: a contractor and his lead foreman (who had to promise to report back to the rest of the crew), a young teacher with a perfectly manicured front yard, and my favorite old guy “squirrel man.”

Good times, great people. It was fun to see that my parents knew about my adult *male* friends. They simply considered these folks part of the community. And what a community, even my highly social parents were surprised at how many people came. They can congratulate themselves for teaching me that it is good to talk to strangers, and letting me negotiate relationships on my own terms.

All these stories remind me of the two old guys (brothers) that lived down the street from me when I was little. They were hoarders/junk collectors and their house and yard was filled with stuff. The kids in the neighborhood would go to their house and ring the bell every day (we always hopped off the porch and hid on the side of the house, giggling). Ed, the one that was home most of the time, would sit on the porch with the kids and just chat and tell us stories of the neighborhood when he was a kid. Or when our parents were kids because he’d always been there (my dad remembered them from when he was a kid, they were middle aged then).

And then they’d give us stuff. Crayons, little toys, random things they found. I once got a small portable record player and a full set of 45s (all classic 50s music). My dad might still have them in the attic. They were great guys and really loved the neighborhood and the kids that lived there.

I’d like to think my kids would chat up an old guy they met at the park. Their nice kids and love to talk to older people about their lives. My son finally hounded my dad into talking about his time in the Marines. My dad rarely ever mentioned anything about that time. At first it was only about training, being on air craft carriers and planes and stuff. But eventually he started talking about some of the stuff he did in Vietnam. My son (then 7) would sit for hours and hours enthralled. He’s always had an interest in the military and especially loves military history. He’s almost 11 now and I still think he’s either going to end up in the military or study history.

Before I started reading “Free Range Kids” and was still all freaked out about “Stranger Danger”, I used to tell my extroverted, super outgoing daughter, who was about 3 or 4 at the time, “Don’t talk to strangers.” She looked back at me, completely serious and said “They won’t be strangers anymore if I meet them, Mama.” Pretty profound for a little kid…but she was right. And she still will talk to anyone she meets. Now we just tell her don’t go anywhere with someone Mama or Daddy doesn’t know because we definitely can’t tell her not to talk to anyone. That’d be like telling the wind not to blow! This kid is a TALKER!!

What an awesome story! Growing up in the “Stranger Danger” era, my mom was pretty overprotective. Now that I have two kids of my own, I try to blind them of that ridiculous theory. Except for the don’t leave with strangers part, of course. Anyway, about a year ago, my mom came to visit. One day we went to pick up some food at a local place. When we were going out the door, a man (about 50’s) came up to me and told me how beautiful my kids eyes (they have big, weird color eyes) and hair (they have awesome curly hair) were. I chatted with him for a minute saying thank you and so forth. When I got back to the truck, his wife came up and asked if she could touch my daughter’s face. Although I thought it was a bit weird, I said okay. They lady gave her a slight rub on her face a pat on the head and told her she was so beautiful. The lady thanked me and the man told me to “take care of them because they were very precious.” (His exact words!) They were soooo nice and actually made my day that much better….until I got into my truck. My dear mom (who I love so much!) proceeded to tell me that I shouldn’t have let the lady do that and how I should be careful because people steal kids and take them across the border to sell them (we live in Texas) and so on and so forth. While I was laughing in my head, I tried to explain to her that stuff like that doesn’t really happen. As always, I’ll be that shy naive little girl in her eyes that doesn’t know anything. As much as I really do love my mom, let’s just say that I am so glad I live 900 miles away.

Oh, and later on, I found out that a lot of the Mexican-heritage people down here (which this couple was) find it to be good luck if they are able to touch beautiful kids! If they believe my kids can bring them luck, then I am happy to oblige!!!

What really irks me is that we advise old men (heck, men in general) to avoid children for their own safety. That isn’t doing a darn thing to help the situation!

But I want to be positive. This was a beautiful and touching story. I used to teach with a male 1st grade teacher (the horror). Yet all sorts of single moms would request him as their children’s teacher because they wanted their kids to have a positive male role model.

This brought tears to my eyes. I’ve had older men give my son money, as well. I always assume the older people like that have grandkids who live far away and are just using their grandparent energy on my kids. Fine with me.

When I was about 14 (1979) I would cut grass and do other things to earn money during the Summer. One of the places that I cut grass for was the local VFW post. When I’d finish I was invited inside for a cold drink while I was waiting to get paid. One time I was there the movie “The Longest Day” was just coming on. I said that it was one of my favorite movies and was invited to stay and watch it. About the time they started showing the invasion on the beach, one guy asked the guy beside me if it was like that where he was at and the guy answered “No”. The first guy said that it wasn’t like that where he was at either. Both men had been on Utah Beach that day, one with the Army and the other driving a landing craft for the Navy. You can learn quite a bit of History by talking to “old men” who have lived through it. Be a shame to deprive kids of that kind of education because of the current paranoia.

Wow. Ok, this one nearly made me cry. Great story, thanks for sharing.

If older men are so dangerous, why do we keep electing them to be President of our Country??

Took my four kids bowling (along with hubby) and a bowler came up to us after a while (we were not very good) and asked if he could give each kid $1. We said, um… okay and he did, telling them that he wanted them to LOVE bowling and keep at it, because it’s something that he’s enjoyed doing every stage of his life. And then he wandered off (and my kids bought candy). He had no horrible motive, he just wanted them to love the place as much as he did. I am so tired of people trying to immerse us in fear when there’s a lot of joy out there!

My husband (white male) has over ten years talking with kids and helping their moms or carers. He says he’s never had a negative incident. He’s had a lot of thank yous and smiles.

I think men are best learning to read nonverbal communication and if a woman or child isn’t comfortable with them, they should honor that. My husband reports he’s very glad to participate in the larger community, helping and talking with many many moms and kids.

My brother used to spend hours up the road with an old man who had a Clydesdale horse in his backyard. My sister and I, both a little older, were too shy for a good year to go along with him. One day he practically dragged us along, and we spent the first of many happy afternoons just sitting on Arthur (the horse!)’s back while he munched his way around the yard, talking to our neighbour when the horse and he crossed paths. This was only a quarter acre yard, too, so we crossed paths frequently. So much fun! We quite often brought our friends after that, so there’d be four or five kids just chatting on the back of a very patient horse!

Don’t remember there being any concerns – certainly not from my parents, anyway – about the ‘appropriateness’ of spending the afternoon with an older single man. And that old fella is still alive and kicking, and living on the same block, probably because he is so willing to interact with the neighbourhood. Presume the horse is long gone, but even he must have been a good old age.

Let’s consider starting a ‘Talk to an Old Man’ Day…..It could go right up there with the ‘Leave Them at The Park’ Day. Bet it would improve the mental health of the elderly.

I vagualy remember (as I was 3 or younger) an old man who would come out and give me a piece of candy whenever my mom took me on a walk around the block. It’s an old but fond memory………:)

They didn’t say too much about the fighting on Utah Beach. They did talk about riding over to England on the troopships, standing lookout watch for U-boats and the camps that they lived in. I didn’t expect them to talk about it. My Father was with the Marines during the Korean War and he never talked about it. A few years ago I was the Historian for my American Legion post and watched “Saving Private Ryan” with some D-day veterans. Several of them remarked about Hollywood finally getting close to what it was like.

I was delivered by the same doctor that delivered my mother. One thing I remember when we went for a visit when I was older is that he gave me a dollar out of his pocket.

I think people forget that these older gentlemen may just be a bit lonely and enjoy someone young to speak with. We had one such man in our neighbourhood; Mr. Sickle. His four children were grown and lived out of town and he had been a widower for over 20 years. He loved to chat with the neighbour kids (and the rest of us) and as mentioned here in other posts, was a decorated WWII veteran. Every so often the kids would run up to him as he was getting out of his car and they would say hello. He would always give my son a “Loony” (I’m in Canada and that is the slang name for our one dollar coin; we don’t have dollar bills, or two dollar bills anymore) They would always say thanks and he wanted them to buy a treat with it. He had a neat garage also with lots of things in it and when he was in there, he let the kids go in too and explore and ask him about all the things he had collected in there. This was a man who just wanted some company and the little ones just reminded him of being younger and gave back to him a bit of child like exuberance !!!!!

If I could draw, I think one day I would make a T-shirt for my daughter to advertise that it is okay to talk to her. I’m thinking:

Old fashioned kid
[Sketch of kid in tree waving to an old man on a bench]
We can talk

I picture a lonely old man, no more family, most friends are gone, and the only thing that would put joy into his remaining short life, are the smiles of children and his contribution to it. But in the world today, he would be shunned and isolated. Remaining alone till the end of his days. It’s sad that many parents are teaching their children that this is how we treat strangers, especially the elder.

Suze (above) has a good point. A good friend of mine is now an “old man”: his girls married and moved out of town, out of the area. That’s demographics nowadays: more and more families are separated by the miles, and you get, when you think about it, a better chance of old folks loneliness because of this. . . they probably miss like hell their grandchildren. I know I would.

When my oldest son was four, we were leaving a store and an elderly gentleman came over to me and asked if my son and I could help him. He had locked himself out of his car and the only way to get in was through the back hatch window, which was open slightly. My son was able to squeeze through and unlock the car. I was standing right there, as was the old man. The old man was so tickled that we were able to help him that he paid my little boy four dollars, which of course, was a thrill for my little boy. My boy is now 10 years old and still remembers that incident. I’m glad we weren’t afraid to help someone who needed help.

In 1972, when I was in the first grade, my family took a train trip across the country to visit Arizona. On one of our trips to the club car, I struck up a conversation with a middle-aged gentleman, almost certainly a traveling salesman. Though I don’t remember what we talked about, I remember the experience as one of the high points of the trip. I must have shown an appreciation for the teeny-tiny Johnnie Walker bottle that I assume my friend was drinking from because he had the bartender carefully clean it out and presented it to me as a gift. That bottle went on to become the start of years of bottle collecting, including visits to 19th century garbage pits around Staten Island where you could dig historic bottles out of the sand. Some weeks after the trip, I got a package in the mail containing one of the man’s company samples — a stuffed Ronald McDonald doll with hand-stitched patch pockets over the logos. As the only male doll in the family collection, that Ronald when on to become an important character in the games my sister and I played for years.

But looking back at the basic details — a middle aged salesman strikes up a conversation with a six year old in a bar, gives her a liquor bottle, wheedles her address out of her parents and sends her gifts weeks later — I can only imagine how this wonderful and entirely innocent event would be construed today. And the world is worse for that.

In the neighborhood I grew up in, there weren’t a lot of other kids to play with, so my sister and I spent a lot of time pestering the older gentleman who lived in the other half of our duplex. Sylvester (so called because I could NEVER pronounce his last name, Jarworski, until I was much older) was about the same age as my grandparents, and had the most amazing thing I had ever thought of up to that point: whip-or-wills in a roost on the side of his workshop. He’d let us feed the birds, and tried to teach us how to whistle their call. He also let us play in his workshop, and his wife, Joyce, usually had treats for us. As I got older, he would tell us all about working for the coal mines and coke ovens in town, or having been in the military (I think he was a WWII vet) and what the town was like when he grew up there. On the other side was also an older couple. If we weren’t pestering Sylvester, we were bothering Mr. Whoric. He was (looking back) pretty eccentric, but it was awesome at the time. He had a big garden he let us help with, and a crabapple tree in his yard, and he had “funerals” for the dead birds and rodents he found. Mrs. Whoric invariably offered us popsicles or cookies. I was in and out of both houses as often as my own or my grandparents’, who lived on the same street. I was very sad when Mr Whoric passed away when I was in high school, and again when Sylvester died about 6 years ago. Both older couples had a lot of influence on me growing up, and I really miss that opportunity for my kids.

http://www.channel3000.com/news/Arrest-made-after-girl-reports-suspicious-man/-/1648/16439578/-/13bw6u/-/index.html

A little off-topic, but talks about a police “dragnet” and arrest after a man in a vehicle asked a 14-year-old some questions, and apparently set off her creep factor. I know we are all to believe in that, but it would sure be interesting to know what the questions were. And maybe he resisted arrest because the cops were calling him a child molester and potential kidnapper?

When I was about 10 years old I took a ferry across the Bay of Fundy to New Brunswick. On that ferry ride I met a wonderful couple, and we talked. I shared some poems I had written and we talked about books. A few weeks later, after we returned home. I recieved a package from the wonderful couple. They had sent me some new books. I guess I had given them my address.
Even now, with my own son, I never tell him not to talk to strangers. And he gets into amazing conversation with people. Though we can’t all understand his words.

and on the same note:
As an “older” gent myself now (and eternally waiting for #1 son to do his duty and provide some grandchildren) in the meantime – I practise on kids every chance I get (which isn’t near enough) a little trick I used to use on my own: (requires humor.)
– giggle fits.
It’s a lovely sound, it is.
And when I hear it – well then, I know they’re all right.