It Goes So Fast: Stories on the Verge of Extinction | Jason Bolanis | TEDxMarianopolisCollege

foreign [Music] good evening good evening good evening so roughly 15 years ago I was going to the hospital a lot not for me but to visit my grandmother she'd reached the end of her life and my family knew this and I made a particular effort to go as much as possible because I wanted to see her as much as possible because I wanted to ask her questions as much as possible this was the last opportunity that I had to learn something that I had not asked her in the past so what I thought could have been the last time I would see her I went and I sat next to her bed and she was asleep and I waited for her to wake up to see if we can create some kind of conversation and indeed her eyes opened up a little bit disoriented looked at me leaned forward a little bit and said it goes so fast and I thought is this the last thing she's gonna say to me because it's kind of cool it goes so fast but it wasn't the next thing she said to me was reach into my purse and get 20 bucks and please order me a pizza the food is awful I took everything she said with a grain of salt because she had dementia though I wasn't sure which one I was going to pick as her last thing that you would say to me because one's kind of funny and the other one I think meant something I wasn't sure what it meant I wasn't sure why she would tell me that it goes so fast she turned 93 in the hospital 93 when someone passes away and you say oh well how old were they they were 93 well they lived a good life when someone passes away at 45 you say that's too soon now why is it this is what's going through my head at 93 years old she's saying it goes so fast it almost upset me almost like she was selfish or something why would you think it goes so fast needless to say I let it go I try to have a bit more of a conversation with her but she fell back to sleep and then the next time I went to go see her she didn't wake up and she had passed away I was at peace with it because when she was alive she was very much alive for most of my life up until that point I was 29 when she passed away and I spent a lot of the time that I had with her asking her questions see I was uh in history in University so I was generally genuinely curious about her life growing up not just about family history but just generally about history she was the oldest person I knew the oldest book that I knew so I would ask questions you know of course how did we come to Canada why did we come to Canada where did you grow up in Montreal uh what was your father like what did he do but then more uh General pop culture type questions you know I would show up at her house and I had discovered Frank Sinatra on my own esteem and I brought up Frank Sinatra CD to her and I put it on and I was excited I thought she was gonna start exploding in Nostalgia but she didn't move she didn't move at all granny Frank Sinatra right you're from the 40s that's when you were you know in your youthful Prime right the books and the history says Sinatra was the man in the 40s like Elvis was in the 50s and the Beatles were in the 60s Zeppelin was in the 70s maybe Bon Jovi I don't know in the 80s the 90s anyways I lost track after a while but but she said no I wasn't into Frank Sinatra I said and who are you into that she says I was into Perry Como I thought what's the difference she says oh there was a difference I said what's the difference there were both crooners they both looked the same relatively and dressed the same she says Oh I thought Frank Sinatra was fresh I thought what the heck is fresh mean it didn't mean anything too good she thought he was fresh too fresh Perry Como was the serious cat that's who she liked now it's a small detail it didn't rewrite history for me but it made me think if she hadn't have told me that and someone would have asked me after she passed away who is your grandmother into in the 40s you know if we're talking about music I probably would have said well it probably would have been Frank Sinatra and I would have been wrong if I had not asked that question and that wasn't just one time that happened many times that she answered with she she answered my questions with answers that were kind of off the beating path a little bit each one not too relevant but if you take each one and you combine it it does create a bigger narrative that helps me understand the past in a different way through her eyes different than reading books about what the 40s were like or what the 50s were like this was just as genuine because she was there and because it was her experience and no one else's experience I labeled that an endangered story because if I had not asked that story I would not know it and then it stays in her mind and then once she dies the story dies it becomes as extinct as the dinosaurs my grandmother is not unique to this that's for sure but it does go so fast that set the groundwork to a series that I'm doing called endangered stories it may be very curious who else has these little tidbits who else is off the beating path in my community where I grew up I grew up here in the suburbs of Montreal the Great West Island and in the West Island I wanted to speak to our elders now it's the Baby Boomers right or some that are a little older than them they're called The Lost Generation so we're talking late 60s 70s and a little bit into the 80s if I can find someone in their 90s unbelievable it's like finding the the gold at the end of the rainbow so I sit with them and I ask them kind of general questions just to see where they're at you know I want to know about the West Island I want to know what the history of the West Island right because there really isn't a history of the West Island it's fairly new I mean Suburban West Island so the people say oh you know when I moved in here it was the 50s and the roads weren't paved and and and there were dirt roads and and you know we didn't have sewers for the rain run off water and and so there were ditches and there were little bridges over and I thought okay I'm kind of getting an idea of what the landscape looked like you know but nothing I guess too off the beating path and I talked to someone else who was around that same age a baby boomer mid 70s let's say and they said the same thing you know we didn't have a high school at that time and the roads were sort of you know dirt and it was dirty and and there was that one store and we used to get our groceries there but what was interesting is that they both mentioned a place where they used to go get ice cream they both mentioned this place and I thought is it a coincidence let me do a test so I put this on the list of questions that I had the next baby boomer I asked sure enough was there a place where you used to go get ice cream and they said was there a place where we used to go get ice cream now they didn't respond like they said oh yeah I remember that but they lit up every person lit up these were not Memories this was nostalgia this was something different I was tapping into something different these baby boomers were remembering something that happened in their youth as if it happened only a year or two ago this happens with you this is nothing unique this is nothing original to them you could be 12 years old and remember something you did when you were five because it had such an impact on you that's Nostalgia it's not a memory right so I said okay well let me see if there's something about this place that I'm missing maybe I should have known about this place before I went in and asked questions feel a little dumb so I did as a historian does I got a Bachelor's in history I kind of knew how to do research I went to the library of course there's no books about the history of the West Island so I checked the city minutes as boring as that was 1950s there was a couple mentions about a place that wanted to open somewhere I checked the old newspapers the microfilm that was cool but still nothing there was like an advertisement about a place but nothing that matched the ice cream place that these people had in their minds right so what was going on here this place was called The Milk Bar and it existed for 10 years it existed right when the baby boomers were coming of age it opened in 51 and then it closed right before they kind of started to become teenagers closed in 61. and after it closed the landscape quickly changed because baby boomers as we all know there was a lot of them so there was a lot of quick development so the land that that place was on became an on-ramp from a highway so guys like me who grew up in the West Island I'm 42 I've never seen that on ramp not there you'd have to be over 65 years old to know that this place would have even existed so if these people had never told me that this place even existed I would have never even thought about it right I would have never even known about it it goes so fast the details that I read on those newspapers and the books and the minutes and all that were very cold and if I had read about those I probably wouldn't pay any second thought to it really this doesn't compare to someone who I interviewed who said I never got along with my father he was an angry man my whole childhood we never had a good moment the only time we had a good moment was on Sundays we would come downstairs and he would say who wants to go out for ice cream they would all get in their car and they would all go to The Milk Bar and have ice cream together it affected her so much she remembers what I screamed she had what her dad had what her mom had and what her brother had she remembers details about the store she remembers details about when it opened who she would see there what the uniforms were like she remembers everything and she couldn't have been more than eight years old but that's the only time that she connected with her father it goes so fast there was none of another another interview that I did where she said if we were good all week and let me remind you these are 75 year old and 80 year old people telling me these things if we were good all week in school my parents promised us that we would go to The Milk Bar on Friday so when Fridays we came home we had dinner we washed up we took our bath we got dressed in our pajamas mom and dad put us in the car and then we went out to get an ice cream at The Milk Bar I mean these are cute little nostalgic memories that I'm sure you guys have when you were kids again nothing special but you know what like my grandmother if you take all of these little pieces and you put them together it creates one very interesting narrative about the West Island it gives it the romance and it gives it the gravitas that it deserves because if they'd never told me this then this place would have never existed these were endangered stories and these are at the risk of being extinct only because they had the Nostalgia of this place only because I asked them they hadn't thought about it in decades so when I think back to my grandmother and when she said it goes so fast I gotta think was it a warning was it advice I think it was both I think the warning was don't take any of your memories or experiences for granted and the advice is take each one of those memories and find the Nostalgia in them because the more Nostalgia you build over time the more things you're gonna have to look back on when you reach that ripe old age of 93 and then maybe and then maybe it'll seem like it didn't go so fast thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,100

Keywords: English, History, Life, Memory, Storytelling, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:48293]

Id: W9lpfb1yRjM

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 28 2022