Things about our parents, that we really have no clue of, and these are the knowledges that came out, unexpectedly…translated…
Don’t EVER fight with your cab driver, he just might win! I mean, on everything, and to everywhere. If you’d mentioned how you just got diagnosed with colon cancer, he may have just been in remission for his lung cancer.
A couple of months ago, we’d returned to our old home in Germany, gone to the Anton Ulrich Museum with my mother in a cab, it was a museum with collections of Vermeer, Rembrandt, and the great Rubens. You know, my mother always sits in the passenger side, to prevent herself from getting carsick———she’d, struck up a conversation with the driver. The driver looked at me, could it be, that she’d, carelessly, mentioned how we just, came home from Taipei? Or me?
“Ahhhhhhh, my wife was from Sri Lanka”, the driver replied, “She’d passed on, but I’d still gone there to visit my relatives, it was, a great place”, or maybe, he meant, “her” relatives?
Then, the conversation shifted to Madagascar, “Madagascar is a great place! I love it.”, mom mentioned Madeira, both places begin with “Mad”, our driver had actually been to Madeira multiple times too! He’d said he’d enjoyed the sights there, he was on a boat, and competed in the rowing competitions there, and practiced his already rusty Portuguese………
And, from Madeira, we’d gone to far, far away places, traveling faster, than a spaceship………
I’d never imagined how useful my mother can be, especially in a cab! But, today, my mother was definitely, useful, and now, our cabdriver flew across New Zealand, and Australia, and he really KNEW EVERY place you’d gone too, “save for Taiwan”! I thought mom was defeated, but then, she’d turned toward him, said in a serious manner, “Maybe you’d gone to ALL those places already, but, my children had, performed in ALL the places you’d mentioned already!”
So, guess who won out at the end of this “whose things are bigger”? The MOM! And that still just showed, how we shouldn’t carelessly cast aside the elderly, as they have MORE life experiences, and, just because they’re getting older, that still doesn’t mean that they’d become, useless, they have a TON to share with the younger generations, especially their experiences in life, so long as we’re willing to, listen to them talk!