Your grandparents were once sixteen, broke and nervous about a crush. Ask them about it. You’ll see them differently.

It is nearly impossible to picture an old person as a nervous teenager, and that failure of imagination is why they can seem like a separate species. They had the same confusion, the same empty wallet, the same inability to speak to somebody they liked. The details were different. The experience was not.

Ask one of them about a crush, a first job, or the most trouble they ever got into. Expect them to enjoy being asked. It turns the conversation from you reporting on your life into two people comparing notes.