No Dumb Questions
When the Telephone Was the Internet
If the encyclopedia failed me, there was always long-distance
My teacher called me over with a tone of voice no kid wants to hear. I knew something was up, and it had my name associated with it. Indeed, I was guilty and confessed to the whole thing.
But let me explain how I got there in the first place. You see, kids of a certain age ask “why” a lot. I should know. I’m a parent. Like you, I was also a kid of a certain age.
Since my childhood, we’ve unleashed the power of networked computers via the internet. It’s great — unlike Mom and Dad, one may pummel it with queries all day long, yet it neither tires nor runs out of answers.
Before that invention, if I didn’t have a nearby explanation for something, I really had to want to know what it might be because the route to the answer involved an unknown depth of commitment to people, books, and libraries.
Kids love facts. The world is a big and uncertain place, and I presume most kids are as compelled towards them as I was, for similar reasons.
I would learn them to try to shift, however incrementally, the weight of the unknown to the known, one fact at a time, to tip the scales of confidence toward becoming…
