An Army of Normal Folks - Be Nice To Old Folks

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

And they might just impact your life too. Our latest Shop Talk on visiting the elderly. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, it's Bill Courtney with An Army of Normal, folks. Welcome to Shop Talk number 39. Welcome in. How you doing, Alex? It's good to be in, Bill. Yeah, good to be in the shop. Got an email from Judy Ann, I hope it's Neeb. What do you think? N-E-E-B? Neb? Yeah, what else would it be? Judy

Ann neb or neb? I don't know. But it's probably neb. That's right. Judy Ann says, hi, Bill. Absolutely love your podcast. Thank you, Judy Ann. Please tell everybody about it so we can grow it. I have a suggestion for a shop talk. I love it. Judy Ann gets. Yay, she's in this show. I spend several hours a week with elderly people. The number one complaint among them is that they are lonely. Please encourage your listeners to spend more time with their parents, grandparents, or elderly neighbors. Just an hour can really brighten their whole week. Thank you for changing the world. One normal folk at a time. Big fan. Judy Ann need. Neib. Well, you said you it says D here. Really?

It says need one says B one says D. Judy Ann. I'm butchering your name. I don't know if it's need or need. I'll look it up but I'm pretty sure it's Neeb. Neeb? Yeah. Judy and Neeb. It's Neeb. It's Neeb? Yeah. Okay. Judy and Neeb. So. Oh that's my fault she actually wrote it right in the email. Well you can't type. And you can't read as we found out we were doing that. Apparently not. Shop Talk number 39. Give your time to some lonely folks. I think it's really valuable and I have a short story about why it matters and might come at her for you too, right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Hey everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the home stretch and I'm exhausted.

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What's good? We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. As you were. Is that what I thought it was? Oh, this is fighting words. Okay. I'll put the hammer back. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a bestselling author with the second most banned book in America. Now more than ever, we with the second most banned book in America. Now more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back. And that's what we're doing on Fighting Words.

We're not going to let anyone silence us. That's the reason why they're banning books like yours, George. That's the reason why they're trying to stop the teaching of Black history or queer history, any history that challenges the whitewash norm. Or put us in a box. Black people have never, ever depended on the so-called mainstream to support us. That's why we are great. We are the greatest culture makers in world history. Listen to Fighting Words starting February 4th on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back. Shop Talk number 38. Judy Ann Neeb, we've cleared that up. To remind you, absolutely love your podcast. Have a suggestion for a shop talk. I spend several hours a week with elderly people. The number one complaint about them, among them, is that they are lonely. Please encourage your listeners spend more time with their parents, grandparents, elderly

neighbors. Just an hour can really brighten their whole week. Thank you for changing the world one normal folk at a time. Big fan, Judyanne Nee me. Thanks Judy. And my maternal grandmother Janice Schubert was an amazing woman. She passed some years ago. She was always there for me. She was always there for me. She was not your typical, you know, when you hear grandmother, maybe at least in my generation, you think gray hair up in a bun with a smock on running around making Christmas cookies and cooking meatloaf and not really leaving the house much. Dinner at 4pm. Dinner at 4pm. Oh gosh, dinner at 4pm. Yeah.

That was not my grandmother. My grandmother actually was a model for Goldsmiths department store, which is now Macy's here in Memphis in the newspaper. She's beautiful. She volunteered at, oh, I don't know, like all these women's groups and stuff that are around town. She was always busy there. She volunteered at church. She did a lot with her Sunday school class and she's just a great person, a very active, very, very active woman who was beautiful. They love to travel. She's been all over Europe and

China and was no in no shape or form a wilted flower. She was a child of the Great Depression like many people in their 50s grandparents were. She respected the value of dollar but was generous with her time and her money she's a great woman in 2011 she got cancer and was dying and one night Memphis had a bad storm and the power went out and she was on oxygen and without it she really couldn't breathe. And my mom called me and told me about it. And so I went over there, see what I could do. And Graham was just sucking for wind.

And I mean, her lips were starting to turn blue. You could tell her she was flush. She was really starved for oxygen. So I went to a friend of mine's house and I got a gas powered generator, put her on the front porch started it up, my plug their oxygen machine into it when the lights were off, or the power was off so that she could breathe. While I was there, I just hung out with her until she started feeling a little better at the kitchen table and we just talked and as her oxygen got better,

she came back to her typical self. She was hilarious too, loved to tell jokes, loved to one-liner. And she said, well, you probably bought me three weeks. And I'll never forget, it was then well, you probably bought me three weeks. And I'll never forget. It was then that it dawned on me my grandmother was dying and wasn't going to be around anymore. So what I did was over the next two and a half, three weeks before she did die, after

work or in the evening, I went by every single night and I spent an hour with her at the kitchen table. I didn't want her to feel alone. I wanted her to have company. I wanted her to have conversations and just feel good, you know, because she was lonely, just like Judy Ann said. And I think that was a good thing. But here's what I found out. I learned so much. She I remember talking about when my grandfather was in the Navy, and what it was like for these Great Depression folks who came up during that time to then fight in World War Two and some in the Korean War. then fight in World War Two and some in the Korean War. She told me about the barracks, the married barracks that they lived in Pensacola. My grandfather was training to be a pilot. They had to tie the bread to the string that flipped on the light in the middle of the

room. So when they are away, the mice wouldn't eat their bread. This is in the Navy. She told me about how so many of their friends who were all fighting the wives would run around and do metal drives, picking up metal so that the country could make munitions. They talked about tire drives, and I don't know why they had tire drives, but they did. And they talked about going out and selling savings bonds to support the war effort and the boys overseas. And she really gave me a first-hand glimpse into what life was like once the war was over, and trying to buy a house and the GI bill and how pretty much every family had somebody that was either hurt or killed in World War II and had someone that was back. And she told me about the

time in Memphis when Martin Luther King was killed and what happened in the city and the civil rights movement. She talked about oddly, she remembered the day that the Iran hostage affair started. And all the all the hostages were taken from the US Embassy in Iran. Just so many of those things. And then she told me stories about my great grandmother or my great great grandmother that I'd never met and told me stories about family lineage and all of it. And here's the point. I was there thinking I was doing a good thing to keep her from being lonely. But by investing that time, it was me who got the most out of it. Old people may be old, but they're not, they're not to be pitied. They don't want to be pitied. And the years and years and years of wisdom of the elderly

people that they have to share. And I don't care if you're 25 or 75, you still like to laugh. And I don't care if you're 25 or 75, you still like to laugh. I don't care if you're 25 or 75, you still like to have relationships. It just doesn't change. And I think so many times we think of the elderly as kind of different than the rest of society. And I guess because their faces are wrinkled and their hands may be drawn up a little bit or they may walk a little slower or talk a little slower that they aren't just like the rest of us but they still are that same human being that was once 5, 10, 20, 30 years old is still in there

that same person still inside that aging vessel of a body that they have and if you choose to spend time with somebody that has that experience and age on them you might find out you're going to learn a lot if you're willing to invest time to listen. I know I did for my grandmother. I also know that had I not been around, I sure wish somebody would have taken some time to spend with Graham. You know, we we always think about in an army normal folks of where we can invest time. There's a bajillion places to invest time and you do not have to join some big organization to exact some measure of positive change to be helpful to be caring if you've got an

elderly lonely neighbor knock on their door and check on them take them up casserole or something if if people in your own family are aged, and especially grandparents who might be widows or widowers, just would you want the twilight years of your life to be spent in solitude? Wouldn't you want to have conversations? Wouldn't you want to laugh? Wouldn't you want to tell jokes? And wouldn't you want to share some of your life experiences with someone. If you have a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle who's a little older, take the time. It's the right thing to do and the payoff is you might get a lot more out of it than you put into it

just like I did with Graham. So Judy Ann, you made a good point. And you said you'd like us to encourage listeners to spend a little more time with their parents, grandparents, elderly neighbors. I think that's what we've done because you're absolutely right. But I want to add to that. It's not you doing a favor. It's investing in a human on human relationship that you're going to get just as much out of as you put into it if you'll just do it.

So invest in a little bit of time and the elderly people's lives that are around you so that when you grow old, maybe that favor will be returned to you one day. At Shop Talk number 39, Alex, I think there's a bit of scripture that speaks to this. Sure. As you guys know, we talk about adoption all the time, but it's really hit me that we've talked about on the show too, this verse of James 1.27, that pure and undefiled religion is taking care of the widows and the orphans. And I do think it's so easy to focus on the adoption part,

because a lot of these stories we tell are so tragic, and foster care. But that, and scripture mentions the widows, just along with that, has definitely had me reflect on that. And I'm actually hoping to take the kids bill to start doing that on the weekends, to visit one of the nursing homes in Oxford.

Actually, in Water Valley, they already got enough activities. I talked to them, so they're already full. One in Oxford hasn't gotten back to me, which has been frustrating. But what I'm hoping comes out, I'll make it work. We're going to find a nursing home to do this in. But what's cool about it, for folks who feel busy like me and you don't feel like you have time, if I'm going to spend time with my kids anyway, why don't I go do

this with them? And what a great way to pass along service to them and have them thinking about it. So for people who feel busy, I think it's actually a really interesting way to teach your kids about service too. That's awesome. That's awesome that you're doing that. You didn't tell me that. Well, I haven't done it yet.

So it's not that you're going to do it. And clearly, not only is Judy Ann calling us to be mindful of this. God's calling to so get off your butt and go be nice to some older folks, keep them company and learn from them. You might be enriched by the experience. Shock talk number 39. And if you have ideas for shop talks, well, why don't you say it? Email Bill anytime at Bill and normal folks dot us, or if you find Bill annoying, you can email me at army and normal folks dot us and I will respond. Yeah, you could do that.

And while we're also throwing stuff out there, don't forget normalfolks wisdom. You can go to it on Instagram at an army of normalfolks. And what we're doing is the people we interview, when they have cool lines, we're collecting them. And then we're putting them out there as normalfolks wisdom, just one every couple of days or whatever. That'd be kind of cool graphics, but it'll be quotes from former guests who have said something profound, we're capturing them,

we're putting them out there. And we're calling it normal folks wisdom. So instead of reading all the quotes from all the smart fancy people, let's read some quotes from normal folks, because they're just as wise as anybody else and then sometimes more profound. So you can do that too. What else before we leave Alex? Sign up to join the army of normal folks at us. Yeah.

Share with friends and on social. Yeah. All the things that'll help us grow in army. Join the podcast. Subscribe to the podcast. You can't join it like, you know, it's not like a meeting. You can join it. Like, you know, it's not like it's not like a meeting You can join it if you I mean

We do if you subscribe we have a meeting. I speak to somebody's on a phone call you set up It's kind of a meeting. I don't know. I'm confused right now, but it's okay Well, if you if you if you become a premium member, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, let me do that too. Yeah, that's true All right. We're leaving the shop. Thanks to our producer, Ironlight Labs. Until next week, do what you can. Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, Here's the Thing, I spoke with more actors, musicians, policymakers and so many other fascinating people, like writer and actor Dan Aykroyd. I love writing more than anything. You're left alone.

You know, you do three hours in the morning, you write three hours in the afternoon, go pick up a kid from school, and write at night. And after nine hours, you come out with seven pages, and then you're moving on. Listen to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the home stretch, right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question.

I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out, like Ezra Klein, Jen Psaki, Ested Herndon. But we're also gonna have some fun thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee and Charlemagne the God. We're gonna take some viewer questions as well. I mean, isn't that what democracy is all about?

Check out our new season of Next Question with me, Katie Couric, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if you ask two different people the same set of questions? Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers. I'm Minnie Driver, and I set out to explore this idea in my podcast, now Mini Questions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions, including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe and Cord Jefferson. Listen to Mini Questions on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your

podcasts. Seven questions, limitless answers. I'm ready to fight. Oh, this is fighting words. Okay, I'll put the hammer back. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a bestselling author with the second most banned book in America. Now, more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back. Part of the power of Black queer creativity is the fact that we got us, you know?

We are the greatest culture makers in world history. Listen to Fighting Words starting February 4th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.