They are the silver-haired strangers who sit in the back of your kids' college classes.
Depending on the course, they might be ignored, embraced or mistaken Day 1 for the professor.
Often, they bite their tongues, fearful that releasing 40 years of adult experiences is like asking younger classmates to drink from a fire hose.
These older students also choke back the impulse to be too direct with their observations: Why are so many of today's kids obese? Why do some of them need service animals for anxiety? Why are they glued to their phones?
Mark KennedyA couple of weeks ago, I mused in a column in the Life section that college - especially humanities courses - might be wasted on the young. (Actually, I don't believe that. Otherwise, I would not be helping my 16-year-old son to find a good college fit.)
A better question is this: Is a higher education worth sharing with senior citizens?
Tennessee thinks the answer is yes.
In a little-known perk for Volunteer State seniors, people 60 years old and older here can occupy empty seats in state college classrooms. If you want college credit, it will cost you, but auditing is free. (FYI, you must register through the university.)
After the recent column, I got a nice letter from Donald Sweet, a 65-year-old retired businessman who moved to Chattanooga from Maine two years ago. Sweet says he regularly walks from his home on the Southside to audit classes at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
"It's one of the best deals going," Sweet wrote. "Truth be known, sometimes my college ID gets me better discounts than AARP."
Sweet agreed to bring some of his friends - other older students who attend classes at UTC - to the Times Free Press newsroom for a group interview.
Betsy Chesney, 58, an English-as-a-second-language teacher, says she is too young to audit classes for free but that hasn't stopped her from taking classes such as "Humor in the Humanities."
"I'd tell [older people] to go for it, and don't let your age hold you back," Chesney says. "Usually, out of every class I'll have one or two special friendships."
Brad Guagnini, a 65-year-old retired media salesman, says he began taking history classes at UTC to better understand the political divide in today's America. Guagnini said he wants to learn, through the lens of history, how "different people see the same things and come away with such divergent opinions."
In a class about the 1960s, Guagnini was amused to discover he is now considered a "primary source." Students were drawn to the fact that he had seen the Grateful Dead rock band with all its original members.
Charlie Willet, 69, a former CBL & Associates Properties employee, said he was able to provide perspective to a class during a discussion about civil rights. When some of the students said race relations had not improved much over time, Willet felt compelled to speak up.
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"Wait a minute," he said. "The first time I went to school here, I worked at the phone company on second shift. I couldn't take a [black] co-worker into a restaurant with me on Brainerd Road."
Senior students say a key to auditing college classes is to be self-aware. Nobody wants to hear them rattle on about "back in the day," they say.
Sweet says having a second helping of college liberates the mind. He no longer has to focus on tests - auditors don't take exams - so he can follow the course subject matter down any path he chooses. For example, he took a cue from one course to study Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson.
There's an unmistakable "people watching" component to this, too. The older students enjoy seeing what youngsters these days are up to.
Sweet says today's generational differences are not so different from the 1960s. After all, baby boomers thought their parents were old and out of touch, too.
"Same circus, different clowns," he observes.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.