For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for January 25, 2024

Mike is in for a surprise……

He looks like he’s been around a while. He’ll probably be a very interesting interview.

The unassuming ones always have the most fascinating stories.

I guess there’s nobody “human” whom Michael knows.

I’ll bet this old guy has had a very interesting life!

He’s got a lot of stories in him and a lot of them should remain buried

And so it begins.

That man will make a more interesting story than Michael himself.

I’m surprised the prof didn’t just give him an “F“ for failing to do the assignment.

I love hearing what more experienced people remember, about how things were and what they did to survive, the twists and turns in their lives. But I’m a sucker for true stories too.

Don’t do it, old man! Everyone knows you can’t trust the Media!!

There was the story of a janitor at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs whom the cadets got to know. They found out he was a veteran who won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Probably the most interesting person on campus.

Does anyone remember the old TV show Lou Grant? I loved that show. There was an episode where Rossi bet Lou that he could pick any random person on the street and write an interesting article about that person. He ended up with a woman who (if memory serves) ran a soup kitchen and had to rummage through garbage bins looking for viable food to meet the need.

For nearly forty years, I’ve attended Airventure, the world’s largest aviation event (over 10,000 aircraft and 677,00 people over 11 days). Early on, I discovered a rule. The old guy staring at a warbird, flew one over Germany in the ‘40s. The grandmother chatting up a Stearman pilot, wing-walked on one when a young woman. The grandfather who was shuffling his maps while getting ready to depart, invented the process for treating fabric-covered wings that everyone now uses. The young lady who doesn’t look old enough to vote is flying left seat for a regional airline. Her older sister flew choppers in Iraq. None of which I would have discovered if I hadn’t just starting chatting with someone who didn’t look at all out of the ordinary. My Airventure Rule is, “Everyone you meet is bigger than they seem.”

I think Mike is getting ready to discover that, and it will make him a much better journalist.

Wait, is this actually going to run in the student newspaper, or is it just a project for the class? I know it’s a journalism class, so there will be significant crossover, but I can’t imagine the paper has space to run every paper submitted by every freshman taking English.

The janitor at my HS was an old guy who always smoked a pipe. I don’t remember him ever talking to anybody

Wel done. This has promise.

Yeah, Mike may be onto something here.. A human interest story about one of the ‘invisible’ employees on campus. He may have had a very interesting life before working at the University.

Janitors can provide you with the latest dirt, Michael.

In the Classic Dilbert comics that are no longer available, there was a trashman who was the forerunner of A.I. (All-knowing Individual). Do not underestimate a person for what he does. Some geniuses walk around us undiscovered.

And at this particular moment, the janitor became the most important person in the world to Michael.

Next time, write your personal experiences in the third person. Unfortunately, too late to do that for this assignment.

His first valuable lesson, so far. To be continued?

There you go Mike!

I remember a janitor having to come to my dorm room after my stereo cabinet exploded (another story in and of itself). Turns out he was from Meadows of Dan, VA, the same community my mother was from. I played him some Flatt and Scruggs and we talked about Merle Watson’s recent death.

MIke being Mike, “Yeah … I was the first person I thought of.” Words to live by.

That janitor will be more interesting than anybody Mike ever met, including his own parents