What We Miss When We Don't Share Tables

​The boys and I went to the New York Giants training camp in West Virginia earlier this week. The day was brutally hot, and shade was impossible to find.

There was about a half hour before practice was scheduled to start. We were standing in an area that had several picnic tables with umbrellas covering them, but it appeared that all the tables were occupied.

Then, a gentleman called out to us. He said you're welcome to sit here with me.

I'm by myself.

So we did.

It turns out the gentleman was a life-long Giants fan down from New York for a few days to take in the camp. He used to go their camp annually, but this was his first trip in years. But once he started telling old Giants stories, seasons and players gone by, Elliott—my most passionate Giants fan—was hooked. An instant sponge.

And it wasn't just football. The man sprinkled in some history about our location.

He told us that The West Virginia Wing of the Greenbrier Resort—where he believed the team was staying—was built above a bunker that was built in the late 1950s to house congress in the event of a nuclear attack. The bunker was roughly 112,000 square feet and designed so the legislative branch could actually continue functioning. Its location was close enough to DC and yet far enough away to handle nuclear fallout.

The wild thing about the story: the bunker remained a complete secret until 1992 when Washington Post reporter Ted Gup revealed its existence.

The man told us this story with the enthusiasm of a man who'd lived in that bunker. He hadn't, but he and his wife had toured it the previous day. (Both boys now want to tour as well).

As a dad, the stories this man told my sons were priceless. They were certainly worth way more than the $200 jerseys being sold at the team shop on location.

But it wasn't lost on me how close we came to missing the gift of this man.

There's no way the three of us were going to infringe on this man's table. I don't know why, but when you see someone sitting alone it feels natural to assume they WANT to be alone. I don't know if that's always been a safe assumption, or even if it truly is these days, but it feels like it.

So I am grateful the man didn't hold our hesitation against us and invited us to join him.

It has me wondering, though, about all the gifts I've missed along the way because I didn't ask more people, "Do you mind if I sit here?"

Or, all the gifts I might have kept from others because I didn't say, "You're welcome to sit here with me."

We are ALL deep wells of stories. And the older I get, the more I believe one of life's greatest treasures—maybe THE greatest treasure—is when we draw from those deep wells and share them with others.

Life: a beautiful intersection of stories.

Beautiful, that is, when we allow for the intersection.