Life, love and the freedom to pursue our deepest interests as children must be encouraged
A quick look at the familiar and often dismal state of learning or lack of place upon our youth.
As a boy in Guatemala, I sat sitting hunched over in my weird closet. No, I’m not kidding, my head bent forward as the board pressed down upon the back of my neck as it wasn’t a high ceiling, it was my damn closet.
There I’d sit with several pairs of shoes and polish them. I fancied that this was my business. A business to make a buck, maybe. Of course, who else, but my mother once she saw my seriousness about polishing, gave me a pair of the old mans’ shoes, wingtips. Just so you know, wingtips don’t really polish. Sure they light up a little but not that sharp light reflection you get off plain leathered shoes.
The shoes of course would run out. Soon I’d find myself out of industry. I would return my dads’ shoes and ask my mother for payment, a routine she quickly grew tired of. She seemed irked by my insistence to polish damn shoes. I’ve of course wondered at the source of her disquiet. She correctly sensed something not entirely normal about a kid squeezing into the bottom shelf of his closet to polish shoes, for Christ’s sake. It was nothing more than my ‘workspace’.
Who knows, perhaps she worried.
But these in fact were incipient stages of entrepreneurship. This was the only time I would manifest this kind of behavior until it reappeared some forty years later, still without success. My younger brother involved himself in far more gainful industrial behavior. He pursued advertising sales for the English speaking weekly put out in Guatemala City for the ex-pat community. He and my father co/owned a huge stamp collection, and he swapped and sold many at those stamp gatherings. He also manufactured candles for sale. I don’t know how successful these and other endeavors resulted. These all before he turned a teenager.
Point being that making and selling candles, and knocking on doors to sell advertising was countless notches above polishing shoes inside the womblike space in my closet.
Weird? Oh sure! Why’d I do this? This was nothing less than an innate interest stirring in the mind of a restless young boy! Of course at some later point and even before (and after), my strange shoe shining phase, (fortunately short-lived) I became seriously involved with chemistry, had my home lab, and my microscope studies. I had hundreds of slides in which I’d preserved and filed an endless array of items, such as fly wings, flea legs, a tiny section of orange peel, and on and on fixed onto slides and covered with thin coverslips, glued onto the slide.
My beloved Aunt Jane worked over a microscope in a lab in Miami and before long was my supplier for the many small accessories needed for this kind of work: slides, coverslips, glue, contrasting stains, tweezers cutters, and so on. Fascinating stuff and to this day it stirs me deeply. I remember the tingle of joy just handling the impossibly thin coverslips, which came in little boxes of what seemed millions as they were so thin.
I failed at preserving the whole panorama of organisms called protozoa. In Guatemala, for a ten-year-old, I had no knowledge then of the preserving liquid used to permanently hold protozoa on a slide for filing away. So my protozoa gazing was fleeting. As the swamp juice slowly but surely evaporated from the slide under my microscope so too the protozoa (parameciums, stentor, vorticella, volvox, I could go on), slowly died and soon were impossible to see due to their demise and immobility.
I went through an electrical phase, this was in our first house in Guatemala. I was nine. We moved from Nicaragua to Guatemala when I was eight and one of the last things I did in my grade school in Nicaragua was showing my teacher one of my electrical experiments. Much to my sweet, and, yes, rather pretty teachers dismay our wing of the school lost electricity because of the short circuit I’d caused. At home, I experimented endlessly with electricity in my room! What in the world! I mean, where’d all that interest come from? Some from my parents who were never ones to sit on their thumbs. I couldn’t get enough of it.
You should have seen my huge copper sulfate crystals. I even made a little jewel box for my mom and on the cover, for decoration, I’d glued three of my beautiful, green, clear crystals.
Hey, with a small alcohol burner, bunsen burner, did you say? Haha, don’t make me laugh. My old man refused to get me one, thought probably rightly so that it was a passing thing. No, my little alcohol burners were homemade which I used for heating all my experiments on small wire stands I’d fashion from hanger wire. You should have seen my set up, sometimes three cookers and smoky bubblys going at the same time achieving the classic: dark, smoke-filled castle, mad scientist at work, perhaps an unwitting friend as my hunchbacked assistant…
A science-fiction movie based on a lab experiment gone awry titled The Satan Bug was my raison d’être for a short while.
I had ongoing experiments, which was my favorite, the thrill of watching whatever unfold into other than it was over a period of days, so satisfying. Sort of a: from this to that… One ongoing experiment was injecting the oranges in our yards single orange tree with liquids I’d eagerly concocted using beautiful glass syringes I purchased in the pharmacy. The oranges, you might guess, didn’t fare that well, but you know, it was after all for the greater good… Or so; it wasn’t a haphazard experiment! Each orange injected was dutifully and carefully noted in my notebook, and I’d watch their progress or lack of as the days passed. All too often they would morph into a horribly colored mess.
One of my more infamous efforts had to do with gunpowder. Or more accurately, the production of… In the pharmacy, I could buy over-the-counter Sulphur, and something called Salt Peter, (no, I don’t know what that is), which was an ingredient for making gunpowder. As I recall, in other words, don’t put my feet to the fire if the measurements are off, in my mortar and pestle would go one part Salt Peter, one part Charcoal, one part Sulphur and I’d start grinding it into a fine powder. Odd thing is I could never grind it past a certain point of fineness before it’d burst, crackling, violently, into flames!
This was the only time my dear Mom weighed in and using her indisputable executive power over my existence told me to in so many words to curb my enthusiasm.
My magnum opus was when I discovered that with much care, great stillness of hand, I could take a straight tube of glass of the type laboratories used for practically everything you can think of and over my small, homemade flame ever so slowly bend it into a spiral! Yes, one wrong move and click, the thing would snap. Didn’t happen often. The end product was a spiral about half a foot long. I quickly figured out I could create my own distillery with it. No, not booze, I was still too innocent. I distilled just about every liquid you can think of.
Accomplishing what? Nothing, for christ’s sake. It was the act; it was the motions. Think of a youngster’s potential! There was only once that I felt, or that it occurred to me, the idea and spirit of producing a superior product, soap, or shampoo. To sell. Of course, it didn’t work. Perhaps had I stumbled on how to make perfumes, holy shit, maybe I’d be a gillionaire by now. From what I understand, mixing up a beaker of perfume is kids’ play.
Another of my passions were firearms. Oh boy, did I just hear a bunch of you punching the delete? As a youngster in Nicaragua, seven-ish, my older brother gave me his ancient pellet gun, and that was it. This quick story will give you an idea to what point this interest had developed in me. In the early sixties, when my family took road trips which involved crossing borders, let’s say from Nicaragua to Honduras we would have long holdovers at the border while my folks got the paperwork cleared inside.
I and my sibs had quite a bit of time on our hands to do as we wished during the car wait. Stuff like jumping into a nearby river, climbing a roadside cliff or tree, throwing rocks at giant iguanas. Whatever. Sitting with our hands on our laps inside the sweltering station wagon was not in our make-up.
I spent my time grilling the hapless soldiers at the border. Young soldiers whose job was guard duty were my surprised victims. I’d approach a uniformed man standing in a tired pose against a dusty wall outside of the immigration office with a question all ready to go. As an example, I’d say: “That’s a 30 caliber carbine, the M-I, have you shot it many times?” This rarely failed in getting a response from the proud, young soldier.
“Yes, many times young man.” His interest now piqued and his eyes on me, wondering perhaps if I were a child insurgent.
I’d enter an in-depth conversation about arms of all kinds with the soldier, getting as much information as I could for my forever growing store of knowledge. Trajectory or bullet path fascinated me; potential travel distance given different calibers. Gas operated versus mechanical actions held me close to the conversation. It soon became apparent that my knowledge went well beyond that of the soldiers’. After all, he was limited to one firearm, was not a hobby, probably had very little interest in the subject, and was probably there on guard duty because they had pressed him into service.
At one government building with its military security, I engaged in conversation with a junior official about the Colt M1911 he had strapped to his waist, a vintage piece with diamond checkered, cherry wood grips. Turns out my familiarity with the classic American military pistol not surprisingly exceeded his knowledge, and he showed his impatience by suddenly ending the conversation. It had not been my intention to upset the man.
It’s difficult to explain such an interest. To this day, though I no longer use a firearm, the impossibility of placing a piece of lead or metal on a distant spot, a target, in the question of a microsecond, from my hand to target seems to this day magical, impossible, and yet. Talk about reaching out and touching something… To be clear.
We overrun the world with firearms and all kinds of weaponry, completely out of control. At some point, we have to curb some of the appetite for this activity. Starting perhaps with a limitation of access to military-style arms available to the civilian citizen. Ouch, click, click there go some more readers, sorry.
Just around the time I was entering high school, I’d developed an insatiable interest in agriculture, specifically cattle raising. I took it upon myself to study everything I could get my hands on that first year in my high school library. I spent two summers riding with a group of cowboys as a cowhand on a huge cattle ranch in Guatemala. For several years prior to the ranch experience, I’d experimented growing corn, coffee, beans (so easy!), carrots in our yard. Along with this all-consuming interest in cattle was a growing fascination with waterfowl of all kinds, which were plentiful at the ranch out in its vast swamps. My interests were so great and all-inclusive nothing could douse them or cause me to become bored.
It’s as though these interests/hobbies which manifested over my childhood had been there all along! As I spent more time in high school, the grading system, and my utter inability to get with the ‘studying’ program guaranteed I’d never excel in these fields. I was poised to enroll in a reputable animal husbandry and agricultural school in Honduras called Zamorano to fulfill my ‘agricultural’ aspirations.
But by then the hip scene had drawn me away with its much more relaxed standards and requirements for entry: none, and just have fun, everyone welcome. The inner flame which had propelled me to learn, to explore deeper, to experiment had dimmed. At this point and after proving to myself that all I was good for in academia was failing, I bailed out so to speak. At that time Timothy Leary with his slogan: Turn on, tune in, drop out, took hold of me. Thank God this social phenomenon grabbed each individual to varying degrees. Luckily for me, it wasn’t whole hog, I kept a foot firmly planted in the world of reality. Yes, we’ll avoid entering the back and forths for now about reality as humankind understands it.
Point being and here is the take away: is that as youths we cultivate interests which show our human drive to learn deeper and further about everything. We need to make this kind of open-ended learning available and encourage this behavior.
As part of the above paragraph, I will stress that my desire for chemistry and microscope work was utterly crushed when in high school I ran into a granite wall regarding my self-generated interests for exploration in the scientific world. What was it? My inability to dominate all the forced aspects taught in Math and Chemistry crushed my very alive desire to learn, learn, learn. I was told in so many ways by well-meant teachers that there were many other fields of interest I might explore, like say business? Another area that needs modification.
So what? I ask you, so what if the young student is not a math wunderkind or can reel off the periodic table of elements with all its commensurate aspects as a requisite to dive into these fields? It’s not just me, the experts have raised this same question and we should do something about it.
Fields of interest should be tailored and modified to mold around the kid, not the other way around! I’m led to ask, what do we want? A child who learns because it’s forced down his or her throat or a child who is allowed to follow the calling of the heart. End results sadly measured on a kids’ ability to hit the books rather than what passion lifts and moves their hearts?
As a parent, what? Whenever one of my offspring shows an unusual interest in whatever, I don’t care what it is; I pounce!!! Pounce with great care. Last thing I want to do is squash this interest in the child. I do whatever I can to encourage it! I believe with all my heart these manifested interests, (that for whatever unexplainable reason show at these early ages), I’m talking pre-teens, are like calling cards from the ‘previous’ past. I believe it’s the child reaching back to her or his former selves, I mean deep past as in past lives. Yes, how else can one explain these things? I will avoid getting into the tiresome and fruitless argument why I believe this. It also has to do with faith.
This is not a piece to explore the ins and outs of reincarnation, past lives, and so on. Not enough time or space. But it seems to be so attached to what seems to be going on as we develop into young adults.
Oh, I know shrinks have all these fancy prepared explanations they learned on their way to their degrees the reasons why a small child can sit at a piano and play as well as Chopin (who published his first composition at 7). But can we put that aside for just a moment? Suspend the belief. Go for a moment with that there are past lives. At an early age, we may still be in a place where we might recall certain things such as those that were passions for us before: music, science, arts, agriculture, warfare; just the things that swept through the planet not all that long ago! Of course, they still do.
It might behoove us to cultivate these deep interests, before aging and our now ancient and cumbersome learning institutions crush these things inside the delicate formation of the child.
At this point in my life I have stood up for the interested child, I will also defend and protect his or her newfound interest tooth and nail. God help the errant adult who should attempt to quaff the child’s interest. Granted, doesn’t happen often, but still. Yes, unfortunately, I will do this even with the kids of friends. Of course, with tact and diplomacy, but I just can’t sit by and watch stupidity snuff out a child’s spark from his ancient past.
I was there once, my old man never responded to my passions. Not complaining here for crying out loud. The man was working his ass off just trying to put food on the table and didn’t have the time to share too deeply with his seven kids’ personal interests. Though there were exceptions, just not with me… Admittedly I was easily the most stubborn and reluctant of all learners.
And remember, we now know that just being aware of and thinking of the idea affects the dynamics of ‘our’ experiment!
