I often find myself wrestling with the conundrum of why it is that young people are supposed to be more interesting to listen to – or at least know more about exciting stuff that should be interesting – than really, really old people are. Or at least that is what a lot of people think. Surely the older generation have had a lot of excitement themselves, haven’t they? It doesn’t get a lot more exciting than dodging land-mines and falling buildings as enemy planes bomb and cries of terror scream from around every waiting corner. That’s the stuff that young people nowadays, with their ipods and obscure knowledge of vaginal plastic surgery, would faint at the site of.
My point is that the older generation need to be listened to. Don’t just fob them off as boring and bitter about life, even if they are a bit. Think about it for a second: if there was to be a third world war now, wouldn’t you be slightly bitter about that in twenty years time? Imagine if you will, living in a world where nobody remembers that the third world war ever happened, but to you it happened yesterday…to you the memories that plague you during the night are as terrifying as they were all those years ago…
That’s why I love listening to my grandparents. They have all kinds of tales to tell which are enlightening and fantastic (even after one thousand hearings). These are things which we should listen closely to, just in case we face a war one day. We’d have wished that we’d have paid more attention to what they were saying after all…