When I Was Your Age

Today was the last of four OASIS Vital Visionaries sessions. V.V. is a volunteer program that is designed to facilitate interactions between medical students and the older adults. There is a growing concern that apathy among young doctors towards the elderly will not bode well for an aging population in need of health care. Each session was held in the Eiteljorg Museum in Indy, where we analyzed art and had a rollicking good time bridging the generational divide. Since starting this program, I've realized I have more interactions with older adults than I once considered. For instance, when I visited Purdue last weekend for the Timmy banquet, I went up a few hours early to see a retired professor and a former administrator/advisor near retirement. No, I'm not afraid to admit I have "old people" as friends. In fact, did you know being surrounded by lots of old people in your country increases your average life expectancy? I even worked out the math, which is too complicated to show here. If you still don't believe how wonderful old poeple are, here's a short list of their contributions to society (unverified):

Wheelchairs
Apple Pie
Dentures
Viagra
The Wheel

Unfortunately, I missed the first and third V.V. sessions due to legitimate conflicts, which put my attendance at a miserable 50%. I quite enjoyed the first session I attended, and all of the older participants were pretty fun and lively. We attempted to build clay pots at the end of that session, but I guess the facilitators couldn't figure out a way to get those fired for us. However, I wasn't able to finish mine, anyway. Also, what I made looked somewhat disfigured, so maybe it's better that I not have a permanent memento of my failure as a ceramicist.

Today's session was quite different since we doubled as volunteers for some event involving hordes of little girls. The Eiteljorg is a Native American museum, and today they hosted an educational adventure into the presumed life of Kaya, one of the "American Girl" dolls. I was in charge of teaching kids how to use a hand-powered drill to drive holes into pieces of wood to be used in necklaces. It's actually quite ingenious how the drill works, as it translates vertical motion into rotational motion. I couldn't find a picture of one online, but I'll post a pic from the event if I can get one from a friend. Part of my job was also to talk about the drill and to pique the kids' interests in using it. At first I found it hard not to use words like "inertia," "friction," and "displacement," and I don't think any of the kids understood my lame jokes about how I love modern electric drills. Kids these days... no sense of humor. I guess they'll never understand old people like me.

Have you seen the remake of "My Generation" by the Zimmers? They're a British band created in response to the isolation of Britain's elderly population, and they purportedly have the oldest band members in the world, like 4 to 5 times my age.