My 11-year-old nephew Eli called me for some homework help.
“I was wondering if you could tell me about a memorable experience. It’s for my honors language arts class,” he said.
“Hmmmmm,” I answered as my hippocampus began receiving encoded memories from my cortex.
Eli added, “You can think about it and call me back if you want.”
My mind began reviewing the potential “memorable experience” playlist, and I sent Eli a few ideas to choose from:
1. The time I reeled in a 42-inch northern pike.
2. The time I was working as a Johnson County reporter when I was 20-something, thinking “I was all that and a bag of chips.” Until the day I walked into a packed room covering a school board meeting and discovered as I sat down in the only open chair in the front row, I heard a loud “clank,” followed by stifled giggles — I had a wire hangar attached to the back belt of my coat.
3. Or the time I was five-months pregnant with your cousin, Chloe, and went white water rafting in the Upper Gauley, Class 4 rapids, and got tossed out of the raft and sucked into an underwater hydraulic, which tumbles a person around like a washing machine and they don’t know which way is up or down. Ace, the company we rafted with, had a safety meeting that noted: If you get tossed from the raft and sucked into a hydraulic, do not try to swim up, because you might actually just be swimming down to the bottom. Instead, relax and the water will eventually pop you back out. The West Virginia Upper Gauley River did eventually release me … and Chloe.
Although I was attempting to think of a story that would appeal to a 12-year-old, I then thought maybe, if I was a good auntie, I would share a story that totally changed my way of thinking. That experience would have been sitting at a table in Dehli, India, having tea with a small group of Afghan men, who were refugees because of their religion.
At that table as we sipped our masala chai, we all shared our stories. Ahmed, a 42-year-old father of two, shared that in his four decades of life, there has never been a time when he or his children have lived without being surrounded by war. I was reminded how most people, wherever they live around the world, basically want the same things: to live with their families in freedom, peace and with love. I was also reminded that it is a blessing to live in Johnson County, Indiana, in the USA. We have a responsibility to serve others.
Eli called me back before I shared the India story, and like a seasoned scout reporter, asked a few follow-up questions about the rafting experience.
Eli: “What were you thinking when you got out of the water and back into the boat?”
Aunt Janet: “I locked eyes with your Uncle Steve and saw the fear on your Uncle David’s face and thought, ‘Well, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.’
Eli: “On a scale of 1 to 10, (1 being never again and 10 being yes) how would you rate your doing this again?”
Aunt Janet: “I would definitely go rafting again — Chloe did turn out to be a great swimmer!”
A note to Eli’s teacher: Dear Miss Oppenheimer at Center Grove North,
Thank you for assigning this interviewing and writing homework. If the students read their assignments in class, may I come and listen? Eli has two younger brothers and 7-year-old triplet cousins that may also need “memorable experiences” in the near future. I would love to hear what Eli’s classmates came up with, so I can either live more memorably — or at least embellish my story a bit more.
Sincerely,
Eli’s Aunt Janet
