Senior Citizens, Young Exchange Essays : From Merry-Go-Round to Space Station

Visions of spaceships and robots danced in Heather Shahbazian’s head. Ferris wheel rides and early talkies filled Shirley O’Connell’s.

The pair Thursday were part of a cultural exchange. North Hollywood schoolchildren swapped perspectives--and perceptions--with senior citizens in an exchange of essays.

Predictions, Recollections

Sixth-graders wrote predictions of what life will be like when they grow old. Retirees recalled what life was like when they were children.

Each generation’s compositions may have seemed equally far-fetched to the other.

“Getting to and from the different planets will take less time and will be very common” in the year 2038, when she is 65, 12-year-old Heather predicted.

“A space station will be put in outer space, along with homes, restaurants, etc., on the moon and other planets. Communication will be advanced so much that you will probably be able to see each other on a screen when talking by phone. . . . computerized servants will be much help around the house, too.

“Food will be in tablet form, having all the needed vitamins, minerals and taste of today’s food. Transportation will be expensive, unless someone puts in a monorail, which will be very useful for both convenience and the smog problem.”

O’Connell, 64, of North Hollywood, recalled that in her day children were interested in more down-to-earth transportation and food.

“I wanted to ride those brightly painted horses that circled the merry-go-round to lighthearted music” in carnivals that came to her hometown, O’Connell wrote. “I watched cotton candy being spun to a cloud of pink sugar and felt it dissolve on my tongue.”

The essay exchange occurred at the Wachs Senior Center, three blocks from the children’s Colfax Avenue Elementary School.

Young pupils have joined the retirees over the past three years for such events as Halloween costume parties and puppet shows. The writing project was a first, said Noney O’Banion, a coordinator at the school. She said 36 sixth-graders put their predictions on paper.

About 35 senior citizens volunteered to write essays about their childhoods, said SuzAnn Nelsen, associate director of the center. Another 65 listened as excerpts from the writings were read aloud in front of the adults and visiting youngsters.

“We’re going to get together again,” Nelsen said. “The seniors are going over to the school to discuss what it’s really like to be 65.”

More Details to Come

They will also reveal more details about what it was like being 12 in the 1920s and ‘30s.

O’Connell wrote that she was forbidden at that age to watch “a romantic movie with the heroine sipping champagne and blowing smoke rings” or to “peek through the pages” of such then-popular magazines as True Detective and True Story.

But, as Heather observed in her composition: “Nobody said life was easy.”