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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I have a severed nerve in my left middle finger from a gardening accident 24 years ago, and I believe if you are learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share lessons I learned from telling stories to my kids.
Today’s Fun Fact: I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited about Guns N’ Roses getting most of the original guys back together. Our former co-host Derek Olsen is so excited about it, he bought tickets to their upcoming Kansas City concert earlier this week. So here are some fun facts about GNR.
- The band’s name was the result of being comprised of members of two L.A. bands: Hollywood Rose and L.A. Guns.
- “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” arguably the band’s biggest and most popular song, was reportedly written in only five minutes.
- The band has changed their original lineup at least 22 times since they started out.
- It took 50 weeks for Appetite for Destruction to hit #1 on the Billboard 200. It debuted at #182 on August 29, 1987 and finally hit #1 on September 24, 1988.
What I Learned Yesterday:
Believe it or not, last Saturday as my kids and I were riding around in my car, they were begging me to tell them some of my stories. It was a really cool experience as they were both engaged, wanting to learn more about my experiences, and asking questions about my life so far.
It’s becoming sort of a thing. A few months ago I was working on building a small collapsable table that I can take with me to podcast conferences and my daughter joined me for a trip to the hardware store. As we approached the store there was a hispanic lady on the sidewalk selling tamales. I was quite surprised to learn that my daughter had never eaten a tamale. Being the kind of person that likes to tell stories, I began telling her about the most delicious, mouth watering tamale I’d ever had.
That led to a story about a date I had one time with someone that my daughter now knows under a completely different context. She was shocked to hear that I had been on a date with that woman when we were in college. She enjoyed hearing the story so much, that she’s shared it with a couple of other people and that is what has led to her asking me to tell her more stories.
I think that she’s learned that there’s more to her dad than what she has seen or experienced with her own eyes. It makes sense. She only knows me as dad. She doesn’t know me as high school friend, college roommate, coworker, acquaintance, or even podcaster. Of course she knows all of those things are part of my life, but she only knows me as dad.
We’re all that way, aren’t we? For example, some of us have had the chance to meet in person. In fact, some of you have met one or both of my kids. A couple of years ago someone from the GSM community spent quite a bit of time with me and one of my kids. Later that person remarked about how cool it was to see me as a dad and complimented me on the relationship I had with the child they met.
It was a really cool compliment that made me swell up with the good kind of pride- that kind of pride that makes you feel like you’re doing something right. It also caught me a bit off guard. I remember thinking that I hadn’t done anything special. I was just interacting with my child the way I always do. But that person had only ever seen me as a podcaster. They were seeing me as a father for the first time.
Just over six years ago I received a phone call that my grandpa was in the hospital. After going through some tests, doctors discovered cancerous tumors all over his body. He was given six months to live. A week later he checked out of the hospital and went back home. His stay at home was short lived and he was back in the hospital a few days later. This time, he would not leave. It turned out that he didn’t have 6 months or even 6 weeks to live. Just a few short weeks after his diagnosis, he was gone.
Even though he was my step-grandpa and not blood related, he was just as close as if he had been. He was the only grandpa I ever knew, and was proud to call him by that name. I spent entire summers with my grandparents and a whole lot of weekends. He taught me a lot of things about God, life, discipline, and showing people respect.
I knew that he had served in the Army during the Korean War, that he had aspired to be an artist when he was younger, and that he’d spent most of his life as an adult working in the HVAC business. But I really only knew him as grandpa.
Here’s what I learned.
It’s funny what death will do to you. Death makes you figure out how to properly prioritize your life really quickly. When grandpa was laying in that hospital bed getting eaten up with cancer, I suddenly had more time to visit him. I had time to ask him questions, and get to know him more.
About a week or so before he passed away, I paid him a visit and it was just he and I in his hospital room. By this time we both knew that it was very unlikely he’d be with us much longer. I asked him to tell me about his time in the military and his younger years. It had suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t really know him. Here was this man that I loved dearly and respected deeply, but I suddenly felt as if I didn’t really know him. I wanted to know him by something other than grandpa.
I’m glad we had that time together. He told me stories of his life and he shared some spiritual insights that only someone approaching death’s door can truly appreciate. That moment in his hospital room is now my most cherished memory of him. I deeply regret that I hadn’t gotten to know him like that sooner.
Earlier this week a friend of mine lost her brother-in-law. He was only 40 years old, the same age as me, and he left behind a wife and two children under 3 years of age. I found out yesterday that George and Hope from our Fright Club podcast had a good friend pass away. He was only 36.
Death has a funny way of making us figure out how to properly prioritize our life really quickly.
So I’m reminded that life is short. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow. We must appreciate what we have now. We must appreciate who we have now. We must make the time now. We must invest in others now.
Share life. Share knowledge. Share wisdom. Share failures. Share all that you can. Allow yourself to be known. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Allow yourself to live. It’s a whole lot better than the alternative.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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