Grandparents’ stories sound repetitive until there’s no one left to tell them. Listen to the rerun.

Repetition is how stories survive, and a retelling usually means the story still matters to the person telling it. The boredom is real, and it is also temporary, while the chance to hear one particular voice tell one particular story is not permanent. The rerun costs you five minutes of patience.

Let the familiar story run next time, then ask one new question in the middle of it: who else was there, what happened afterwards, what the room looked like. New questions open old stories in directions you have never heard. That is often where the best material has been sitting.