I love the fact that the Internet is bringing together the generations as never before.   The hottest video blogger ever is featured on YouTube and he’s 80 years old.   His name is Peter.   He lives in England and his video blog is called “Telling It All”.   It’s just him, sitting in a chair, telling his life story in 10-minute episodes.

As of today, 1,508,407 people have viewed his videos.   My husband Don wrote him a note telling him how much we had enjoyed his blogs and that we were working our way through all 60 (now 63) of them.   He actually wrote back and thanked us, mentioning that we had a monumental task ahead of us and hoping we would find it worthwhile.   On his videos and by mail he appears to be a very nice man.   He also shares our love of the blues and often has an introduction or fade-out of blues music.   He sometimes smiles and calls himself “grandpa”.   In a short period of time he’s become a grandpa figure to a lot of people.   He’s the grandpa everyone wishes they had, the cool one, the one who went back to high school to take art classes and sat at a desk among high school students when he was in his 50’s.   He then attended university and received his degree in art in his 60’s.   That was just one of his adventures, there are plenty more.   The stories of his experiences during WWII are low-key yet compelling.

Throughout his life, as the times and circumstances changed, rather than sitting back and blaming the world for not staying the same, he leaped ahead with vigor and enthusiasm into the next challenge.   While taking care of his responsibilities, he nevertheless always made time for the things that made him happy, that made him a complete person.   Even now, the reason he is considered
“the coolest old dude alive” is because he learned from the old and continues to dive headfirst into the new.

I want to be like that.   Thanks, Peter.

Lisa Miller

Tags: generations, geriatric1927, youtube