A Joyful Experience

Monday, February 3, 2014, the celebration of my departed Mother's 97th birthday brought me a the gift of meeting Lauren, a student from the Calgary Jewish Academy.

 Our unique "older" students’ blogging group met a second unique group...students from the Jewish Academy in a small meeting room in their school. Our inspiring and motivational leader, Mariette, initiated introductions by commencing a game. Mariette introduced herself and then stated "I bet you never" and followed that with something unique she had done in her life.  If no one could say I've have done this, the person next to Mariette followed the routine. Eventually we knew each other’s name and a minimal amount of information about each other.

Initially, I was nervous and concerned about meeting up with the students because I felt I  had nothing to share...I didn't experience the hard times that most of our group had experienced...in fact I was thinking about backing out and not attending. However, once the introductions and the game commenced I was at ease.

When it came to me to introduce myself I stated my name and said, "I bet you 
haven't rappelled down the outside of a small building "Aussiestyle". I was asked what this meant and followed with an explanation. 

After the introductions and lunch, the "younger" students were advised to chose one of  us "older" students to partner up for our commencement of "fun" in the computer lab. Lauren chose me. We walked down the hall from the room we met in, entered into the computer lab, and sat waiting eagerly for our instructions from Mariette.

We were instructed to go to the Bubbies and Zaidas blogging site to view the various blogs...now the laughter begins. I didn't know what the link was for the blog and therefore located it in a long about way. Mariette came to where Lauren and I were sitting and told us the link was and Lauren typed it in... Lauren then stated something like "you're slow" I started to laugh.

When we finally got to the blog page....I advised Lauren to scroll down to see the various blogs and then suggested she read Bruce's...she found it very interesting, especially reading about how huge the computers and servers use to be "in the day". There is a lot more to this story, however, I will only point out a couple of highlights.

One of the highlights was when Lauren said to me I bet you type by using only two fingers and showed me what she meant...I started laughing again. I told her that when I was employed that my job involved using a computer every day. I jokingly put my hands on my hips and said "I bet you don't know what an ergonomic key board is"  Lauren said no and asked what it was...I explained in detail what it was and its purpose.

A thought that came to my mind when Lauren inferred I used only two fingers to type was to challenge her to see who is the fastest and most accurate, what a blast this would have been.

Lauren is a "hoot", a lot of fun and funny.  My thoughts are that we have the same type of humour.  I had forgotten how much I enjoy being around children, well really, young adults.

The time zipped by and we were back in the original room saying our goodbyes until the following week.

As I left for the day two other students pointed to me and said, "You are the one who rappelled Aussie style".  I said yes and told them quickly and briefly about my experience as a civilian officer with an Air Cadet squadron. I stated that the cadets did the rappel, however none of the male Officers did, therefore, I had to prove to the cadets, the male Officers and myself that I could be the "little engine that could" and the rest is history.  

It was great to be a part of my history, not just the assumptions people make about me now.   It made my day so much better.