So the guy who I worked with in the computer lab today was this seventy-odd old man who has probably had every experience known to man. He has been a cop, an engineer, an EMT, a fireman, a heavy equipment operator, a bouncer, and who knows what else. He told me at one point that he is on three pensions. Three! That means he worked three different jobs long enough to get a pension! Pretty amazing, if you ask me.
One of my favorite things to do is listen to life stories of old people. I don't know why, but I find it gratifying to understand what life was like for older generations. If there is an old coot with enough stories, I could listen to him all day long.
Like most old people, though, this man was rickety and full of problems. He said himself that he lived on Tylenol. He had a pretty impressive gut, but I was told that the reason for it was the fact that his spine curved outwards towards his stomach. Apparently he had been 6'1 and is now 5'9.
This old man has some serious work skills. He can fix anything and everything. Some of the descriptions he gave me of technical mechanical stuff went over my head--and things rarely go over my head when it comes to mechanical stuff!
The thing that made him a little bit hard to understand, also, was the fact that he was missing half of a lung. According to him he had some sort of disease that needed a lung removal.
The people I was working with--the clients--were the same as always. Most of them typed in the single digit WPM range. It appears that there is also a trend: the shift key is a little bit too technical. I think the fact that it only turns a key capital when it is depressed and not when it isn't is a little too hard for many of these clients to grasp. It made me think about how lucky I am that something like this shift key doesn't stump me. I am more and more grateful for my intelligence after every day spent there.
I hope other people will start appreciating what they have as well.
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