And Down the Stretch They Come
On this day, my father’s rebuttal of a reference-book detail was an early lesson in the value of a skeptical mindset
Presidents’ Day is a reminder that another year has passed since my father’s death in 2015. He was eighty-two. I commemorate the occasion by posting childhood memories, big and small. For previous years, see: My Father (Series).
One of the delights from my childhood was the arrival of the latest treasure from the Life Nature Library set. Every volume’s appearance at our mailbox, carefully wrapped in its cardboard mailer, was a highly anticipated event. The twenty-plus book set was riveting, far more engaging than the staid Encyclopedia Britannica, the other large investment in our future my father made around the same time.
Perusing these books was pure joy, but despite all the amazing content they held, the one thing that stands out in my memory related to these books was the time my father contradicted a fact from one of its pages.
We kept our Nature Library set on the bottom shelf of a small room divider that separated our living room from the dining room table. The books, organized in volume order, formed a lineup of earth-toned hardcovers stocked with unquestionable knowledge. Every cover was as an invitation to the subject: the menacing skull of Early Man, the closeup of the lion’s face fronting The Mammals, or the sleek dragonfly on The Insects. (An early inspiration for a children’s story I wrote years ago about a heroic dragonfly.)
Gorging on these books, I soaked up all the information and knowledge within. Reading excerpts aloud to my parents or siblings was part of the allure. The dazzling photographs and images stood for proof. The books were exquisite and precious. We policed each other to ensure we turned the pages from the outside edge, never the inside top corner, a maneuver that might cause a page to rip.
I loved to study the charts and illustrations, which usually contained details meant for close observation and analysis. I especially liked the fold-outs that extended the already sizable pages to show, for example, the evolution of man or the planets of our solar system, or the speed of mammals. This latter illustration was the source of our disagreement, or rather, his disagreement with the book.
The “Speed of Mammals” illustration compared land speeds of various animals, starting with the slowest on the left-hand side, and reaching, far to the right, the fastest of them all. Close to the binding, at the slower speeds, many types of animals — those on four legs, those on two, and those that crawl or hop — densely populated the graph. On the other end of the graph, the animal density was sparse. The cheetah was the farthest out, the champion sprinter reaching a top speed of 70 miles per hour. Humans were back in the pack, at around 20 miles per hour.
When my father inspected the “Speed of Mammals” fold out, he was disappointed by where the horse was placed. Reaching speeds of around forty miles per hour, they were no slouches, but they lagged far behind the cheetah. I knew he admired the speed of the thoroughbred horses, animals he studied closely using complex ranking systems he worked out on the margins of the Daily News on Saturday mornings. After examining the fold-out, he countered that the horse was, in fact, faster than the cheetah.
Disagreeing with an illustration from the Nature Library was an unexpected and shocking response, undermining the sanctity of these books. How was it possible that my father wasn’t a believer? He calmly made his point about the horse, explaining that, while the cheetah may have the fastest top speed, any of the horses at Aqueduct or Belmont would beat it in a longer race, say, a mile race. He said these horses were not just ordinary animals; they were athletes, reared for one thing, to run fast and long. He was doubling down on their endurance, and on his irreverence.
But that’s not what the chart said, I protested, not ready to give up on the expertise of the Nature Library’s writers. There was nothing about how long the race needed to be. I assumed he was just cheering for his favorite animal, and he had to be wrong.
Provocative utterances from adults, whether a hasty judgment, an unfavorable opinion, or a critical observation, upend a young mind’s perspective on the world, and linger, a persistence that is usually unbeknownst to the adult. I’m certain my father was never aware of how his offhand contradiction stayed with me.
Some months later, when our original discussion should have long been forgotten, I ran into an article confirming my father’s claim about the thoroughbred and the cheetah. There it was in print. A thoroughbred’s ability to run long distances at high speeds, easily covering a mile in under two minutes, would leave a cheetah in the dust. The feline can only stay at top speed for very short sprints, the article explained. It would have to sit down to cool off after a few hundred meters of exertion. I sheepishly brought the article to him, telling him he had been right about the horse and the cheetah. His smile said, “I told you so,” but he didn’t say it.
I doubt he realized how his challenge of the illustration had been volleying around in my head. I was glad he turned out to be right, preserving his all-knowing status. I wouldn’t notice he was fallible for at least a couple of more years. And it would be a few more years after that before I would acquire enough armor and weaponry to challenge his conservative and disciplinarian mindset — or to put it another way, act like a typical teenager.
His disbelief in the chart turned out to be an excellent lesson in the importance of thoroughly examining information and clarifying parameters, and that there’s no such thing as unquestionable knowledge. Looking back, I see it was an early and important lesson on the value of a skeptical mind.
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