What? I need details on this. When did Vulcans even have contact with humans in the 1950s? Why did they care about some random human teenager?? How did this come up as a relevant storyline?

In “Enterprise” T’Pol tells Archer and Trip about how her great-grandmother and two other Vulcans crash-landed on earth in 1957 and tried to blend in with the humans in Carbon Creek Pennsylvania. They’re stuck there for a while and get pretty close to some of the humans. One of them is a teen boy who wants to be an Engineer, but his single mom can’t afford to send him to college. T’pol’s great-grandmother grabs a patch of velcro from the inside of their crashed ship and takes it to a manufacturing company and then anonymously leaves all the money with the family. Two of the Vulcans are rescued, but a third one decides to stay on earth to keep observing the humans in secret. Archer and Trip both think T’Pol made the whole thing up and she says “You just asked me to tell you a story” and then goes back to her room and takes out one of the ancient 1950s artifacts that had been passed down to her from her great-grandmother, revealing that the story is true. 

Every time I think Star Trek can’t show up with something more ridiculous I’m corrected

Thank you for this important history lesson!