[KotOD]

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1. I reserve the right to change my mind. When I was in my 20's I knew it all. Either I forgot most of it or I wasn't as sharp as I thought I was, because now I'm ovwhelmed by just how much I don't know. Maybe it's an effect of finding myself on life's "down" escalator, but my desire to absorb new information is insatiable.

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This is both awesomely and awfully male. I went through the same thing. Those people older than me were "old guys" and didn't understand and didn't know. They couldn't understand the differences between my life and their lives. Then, sometime in my mid-20s, I realized that I was going through everything that my dad and grandfather and random assorted elders told me I would.

It was about that time that I started actually listening to those "old guys" and realized how many times I had to say "you were right". Even if I didn't say it then, I could wait some period of time and trot it out. Now, I listen intently when they speak to me, and put up with hearing the same story for the fourth time. For years I debated baseball with my grandfather, and for years I thought he was crazy. Then I figured out that he had watched 75 years of baseball and knew a helluva lot more than me, even if I knew the stats and games and players better than he. Now, I freely tell anyone that will listen that Carl Hubbell was, indeed, the greatest pitcher ever.

My pap passed last year, and though I wasn't sad for his passing -- he lived for a glorious 88 years -- I desperately miss the times when we got together and he would regale me with stories of the last 80 years. Now my dad has taken up the mantle of storyteller and wise old sage. It's amazing how much stuff old guys know.

Hanging out the "old guys" and realizing how much more they knew than I did taught me one overriding lesson that I adhere to until now:

Listen. Listen constantly. Don't interrupt with your silly comparative story. Don't cut those that are wiser off in mid-sentence to get in a punch line. Listen to them and freaking learn. They know so much more than you.