My Eighth Grade Social Science Teacher at Nicholas Jr. High School, the great and wonderful Noreen Stevenson, once told me an amazing story.
When she was a young woman, she was at a social function and had the fortune of meeting her idol Eleanor Roosevelt. The two shook hands and introduced each other and exchanged pleasantries and that was it. That would be enough for Noreen.....she had just met the woman that she and a whole generation of Americans admired greatly.
Years later....mind you there had been no contact between Ms. Stevenson and Mrs. Roosevelt since that casual meeting, the two are once again in the same room together. Mrs. Roosevelt approaches Noreen and says, "Noreen Stevenson, how are you doing?"
That to me has always stuck out. If you consider all of the people that Mrs. Roosevelt must have known and met over the years from America and all over the globe, that is an amazing feat that she could remember the name of a lady from Fullerton, California.
That's a hard feat to do...remember names and faces. I struggle with it. I even try those memorization tricks they tell you to do.
I would be happy to tell you about those memorization techniques but I can't remember them right now.
I was reminded of that story, this past weekend when I was at a Political Campaign Kick-off Meeting. The candidate approaches me and shakes my hand and says she knows we have met somewhere but can't place it. I of course, can't remember if I've met her before.
Then it hits her...I am on her Facebook Page! "I see your face all the time, she tells me." Yes, that's it. We became Facebook buddies during the last election when I voted for her.
Which got me to thinking, I wonder how Eleanor Roosevelt would have done with Facebook.
Bombarded with all these additional names and faces (and you just know Eleanor would have one of those Facebook pages that she would have so many friends she would have to open another page) would she still have been able to see Noreen Stevenson across the room several years later and approach her and call her by her name?
And while you are pondering that deep philosophical line of questioning, my stream of consciousness took me over to thinking about my late Grandma Elva Rose Liesch and my late Grandpa Wesley Liesch.
How would Grandma do on Facebook if she was still alive to see it?
I argue that she would do quite well. Grandma was doing Social Media before we even knew what it was. She was a pioneer. She wrote a social column for the local newspaper and I would always see her on the phone with people getting the latest stories. Plus she took bad photos which she would share with people.
Yep, she would have been good on Facebook.
Then I was thinking about my Grandpa Liesch. I would have loved to see him during the era of ESPN.
This is because he was a sports multi-tasker. Every time I would go over to his house when I was a kid in the 1960's and early 1970's, he would be watching the Laker game on the Television, listening to Vin Scully on the Dodger radio broadcast on his transistor radio with an earphone all the time while reading the sports paper.
Yes, he would have been in seventh heaven if he had lived to see ESPN.
Well, that's it for today...I need to go to a meeting with somebody this morning.
Now if I could just remember their name.
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