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Respect and appreciation of elders is quite a separate thing to seeking out the company of your elders - with a group of your peers that are not family - for the deliberate intention of listening to them repeat their memories. (When you're in the middle of your summer holidays, its not raining, or fogged in or cold, and you have a deep mysterious ravine to explore.)
Expectations may force certain behaviour, and in indigenous communities there is are traditions and perhaps duty involved because this is how their education and history is handed down. Younger children often exhibit a fascination with their elders, and we get older we begin to realise what we may have been missing, and on an individual basis some are inclined to befriend the older generation.
Exceptions to rules abound, so I'm not suggesting the situation described is an impossible one, it just seemed unlikely enough - to me - to be a humorous juxtaposition: old man reciting memories, group of young boys in the middle of their summer holidays. What are the odds?
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