Tell Your Story

Recently, my youngest niece asked me, “What was life like when you were young?” Despite feeling ancient and that I should be on display in a museum after hearing her question, I realized that my life at her age really was different. One difference is that I didn’t have easy access to technology like she does. She can find information at the click of a mouse or by using her cell phone whereas I had to thumb through books and talk to people. Also, I feel that my generation had more freedom and perhaps felt safer than kids today. For instance, I didn’t need to go through a metal detector to check for hidden weapons before entering school. If I came down with a headache while at school, I could take an aspirin whereas now some kids are required to have the school nurse dispense over the counter medicine.

It occurred to me that I should somehow record information about my life for my niece but I wasn’t sure the best way to do this. After researching, I learned that there are organizations that have created ways for people to record and share their stories.

 

Thanks to the People’s Library project at the Richmond Public Library in Virginia http://www.nomovement.com/People-s-LIbrary, people are writing about their lives to pass along to others. A thousand blank books are being created from discarded books for participants to fill in their history. They can take a class from the library on how to write memoirs. Then they inscribe their life stories on the pages by hand. Completed books are included in the library’s permanent collection and placed on shelves next to bestsellers and classics for residences to check out and read.

 

Another creative project I read about in Readers Digest is StoryCorps. It began as a small oral history project at Grand Central Terminal in New York City then spread throughout the United States. Almost 100,000 people have participated over the past ten years telling their stories in recording booths. Sometimes family members interview each other and touching stories have emerged. One man talked about how he left the Navy in his mid-twenties to stay near his newborn daughter. When his daughter was about ten months old he began raising her as a single parent. He worked as a janitor at night and sometimes had to hide her in the closet at his job. He even took her to college classes and several of his basketball teammates occasionally babysat. When he graduated from college he carried his daughter with him as he received his diploma. His classmates gave him a standing ovation!

 

I think sharing our personal stories is a great way for a younger generation to better understand people they care about as well as learn a more personal version of our shared history.

 

Have you recorded your story? How do you think life is different for kids compared to when you were a child?