My father in law is a hard man. He has spent all of his life working hard and is not much of a talker. He has always been polite and kind but I never really felt like I knew him. Last time he came over I asked him “Who taught you how to drive?”. He spent the next 20 minutes telling one story after another. He told stories about how his first car was a tractor. He drove an old flat bed International Harvester on the back roads outside of North Dakota and made a midnight border crossing when he was seventeen. Getting back into the states was complicated by the fact that there was no record of him entering Canada 3 hours earlier. I have known him for 6 years and this was the first time I have ever felt like we had a connection. – Libby, Mattaponi, VA, USA
For the last two years I have been teaching English in Korea. I mainly have classes of 14-17 year olds. I also teach collage students 2 nights a week. I have found your questions to be a Godsend. Every Wednesday we work on conversations. All I have to do is read five or six questions before class and then I have material for a number of conversation. They are engaging enough that I can get board teenagers to want to share and listen. It also enables me to quiz the class mates for comprehension. – Carlos, Pusan South Korea
I was reading the reading the questions with my seven year old daughter, I asked my daughter what I thought was a simple question. “what is the farthest you have ever walked” She talked about are family vacation to the black hills last summer. But then she asked me the same question. I was surprised have her carrying on a real conversation with me, I also had to explain to her was a Marathon is and that “Once mommie ran a half Marathon” This conversation got me thinking and it also got me running again. This weekend I just finished a 10K. My time was under an hour and a half. It is not a great time but I ran the whole way, Not bad for a mother of three. -Naomi, Southern Oregon
The set “13 questions to ask before you loan anyone money” is absolute genius. I have a buddy who is perpetually broke. He asked me for a loan and this time it was not a few bucks for beer and pizza. It was a good chunk of change. I like the guy but I just knew if I gave this guy any money I would never see it again. Maybe I would never see him again. So when he asked I just printed out the page with the question on it and gave him a pen. He went to work answering the questions. When he got the one about “Why can't the person get a loan from a credit card or commercial institution?” He started to get a little uncomfortable and had to admit that his credit cards were all canceled. By the time he got to the question about owning money to anyone else he had disqualified himself. He didn’t finish the questions and he didn’t ask me for the loan. He just thanked me for talk to him and left. These best part is I was able to take the situation and turn it into “It’s nothing personal” - Tom, Madison, WI
