Brent and I volunteered to be a part of the W.I.S.E. program at Louisville Elementary School. All four of the 4th grade classes were involved, and each child was paired up with a local Senior citizen. We aren't 65, but 61 is close enough. My partner was named Samantha, and she was a budding artist. We passed a journal back and forth and chatted, wrote poems, played games, wrote little stories, etc. together (she drew a lot of pictures, too). We filled in a timeline of our lives. The biggest part of the project was the life story interview questions us old folks were asked to answer, and which the kids used to write a short biography of their partner. All this took place over a number of weeks. On Tuesday night, the teachers, parents, and kids gave us W.I.S.E. partners a dinner and the kids performed a little talent show. It was great to finally meet each other in person! The children presented their partners with the biographies they had written about us. It was fun! I spent a lot of time responding to the questions about my life, and so I figured I might as well post them!

Here are the three responses I wrote.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This is the closest thing to a personal history I've done in awhile.