Question of the Week - 1/28/2022

[jrham]

 Hey all!

I accidentally blurted out a random question at trivia last wedesday and enjoyed the answers I got! Hopefully it stirs some good memories!

“What's something that you've learned from one of your grandparents? Bonus if you add a song that fits the mood of what they taught you”

[jrham]

My personal answer is patience. I've always been high strung, but my grandparents were able to make me slow down to think, observe, and explore. This propagated my joy of gardening (hehe); now I grow vegetables for homemade salsa, various herbs, summer berries, concord grapes, hops for brewing beer, and seasonal flower arrays for my kitchen vase.

Here are two VERY different songs that are evocative of patience to me:

https://open.spotify.com/track/3gFQOMoUwlR6aUZj81gCzu?si=b7b323b4ce44445a

https://open.spotify.com/track/4aQ8mFkZU6dmHaZOOKdscc?si=6f75ec93f0c64c7f

[Xenia]

Great question @jrham! First thing that comes to mind is my great grandma telling me not to eat after 8PM, so every midnight snack I take weighs heavy on my conscience 😞

But jokes aside, they led completely different lifestyles than we do now and what I learned from my grandparents is not to be wasteful. Can’t really put that into a song, but if I turn it around in ‘be happy with what you have’ I’d pick this one

spotify:track:2mlGPkAx4kwF8Df0GlScsC

Gardening is also something that makes me think about my grandparents. I only saw them during the holidays and we spent a lot of time at their country cottage out of town where they grew all sorts of fruits and vegetables and I ‘helped’ taking care. By helping I mean mostly picking raspberries, currants or any other sweet berries available and eating them 🍓🍒🍇

[Sebasty]

Well one thing that grew on me from spending a few summer weeks at my granny's was something that later evolved into sewing things. She had a bunch of textile which i cut clothes out of for my toys. Many years later I'm now skilled enough to stitch some pretty elaborate plush creatures and create clothes for those.

My other grandma brought out my huge fan side by gifting me a cd of Ricky Martin, which is.. surprisingly enough still working. : )

My great grandma was the most inspiring though. We'd go visit her randomly and see her plant potatoes everywhere around her house, under apple trees and stuff. And she had the friendliest cats, she was an actual cat magnet.
Her story would basically be ode to independence, doing what you want to do and feeling joy from your accomplishments.

I have a very specific song that fits the textile destruction phase of mine - it came on radio very often while i was admiring the sparkling mess i got myself into:

spotify:track:4kYZWXlFUZaCCrzZZJL7X8:small 

[Katerina]

That's indeed such a nostalgia-filled question! None of my grandparents are alive today but they all taught me things (on purpose or inadvertently) that helped my life.

One of them, was a neat trick from my maternal grandpa on how to open the lid on stuck jars. Basically, you hit the lid horizontally on a hard surface (like the corner of the kitchen counter) three times, rotating each time after you do. After the lid is bumped in these different points few times, you can retry opening it. This time, it should twist and open smoothly! I could probably show this easier than explaining it, hope I did it justice though!

It's still massively handy when I try to open jam, pickle or honey jars! 🍓🍒🍯

[MadmanOnWheels]

It's hard for me to pinpoint any particular thing that my grandparents taught me, but I do have a little memory to share that has to do with a song.

When my brother and I were not yet teenagers and visiting our grandparents for the summer, as we did most summers, my grandpa taught a song to us. I don't know how it came about, but he would sing sometimes; it probably came about from us (him, my brother, and me) all in the car (that old maroon station wagon which I miss), and him just deciding to pass something on to us. We soon would practice the song, in the backroom, and even videotape it. And after getting back home to our parents, we even sang it together, for the church talent show, in the fellowship hall, not that we were talented singers. That's such an appropriate venue, too. Ha, ha

The way that he taught it to us was not exactly the way that it was recorded, which you can hear below. It sounded more barbershop quartet style, but that's the way that I will always prefer it; it's also the way that I first heard it. Imagine the "makes me feel mellow" stretched out the way that a barbershop quartet would do it. My brother would exaggerate that part. I wish that I could hear it sang in my grandpa's voice, again. I haven't gone through the song aloud or in my head, at least fully, in years, but I could probably still remember all or most of it, if I try. A funny thing about this is that I don't even drink alcohol.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7pN6VXqfhGqxCepdsYrZdi?si=o2Avmp0WRHutCr1vxrjudA&utm_source=copy-link

On a side note, some tragic new came out, about Tom T. Hall. He recently committed suicide.

Tom T. Hall's Heartbreaking Cause Of Death Revealed 

[jrham]

I love all of your answers! They are all so wholesome! Thank you for sharing.

[cattymaloudy]

Thank you so much <top>