I Know Everything!

Okay, not really. Not yet. But I’m working on it.

I think it started early, this curiosity about the world. See, my father was a schoolteacher and didn’t get paid in the summer. That meant he had to find a summer job every year. They varied from hard physical labor in the gypsum mill to being a Fuller Brush salesman. The summer I was nine, he sold World Book Encyclopedias door-to-door. I don’t know how the pay was, but I know I was the beneficiary in more ways than food on the table. That’s the year we got our very own encyclopedias.

I was a bookworm. I read everything I could get my hands on. We lived just outside a town of 750, surrounded by Iowa cornfields. I was old enough to walk the mile from our house into town to the library by myself, so I was systematically working my way through the children’s section of novels and biographies.

Our set of World Book came with its own stand. The stiff, new books stood enshrined under the window, near the piano, along with Childcraft and Children’s Classics. I memorized the rough texture of the covers, the new book smell. Some volumes were fat ---- B, S ---- some were so thin they combined with other letters. Our family suddenly had the world at our fingertips.

I had plenty of questions. How do caterpillars turn into butterflies? There it was in the B volume, with illustrations. How big around is the earth? Who was Clara Barton? How many presidents were there? Where was China? I could satisfy my curiosity any time I wanted. It came with workbooks, too, which had questions I hadn’t even thought of. I was, as they say, in hog heaven.

Fast forward. I spent a lot of years, as we all do, very busy with family and job responsibilities. I had bills to pay and divorces to negotiate. My curiosity shrank and became more focused. How do you make your own baby food? (circa 1974) What was rural life in Illinois like in 1845? (working as a first-person interpreter at Lincoln Log Cabin Historic Site) How do you register with the state to become a home daycare? (circa 1982) Where the hell is North Carolina? (circa 1987 --- I found it!)

Now, in retirement, I might as well be that nine-year-old once more. Only this time, instead of cumbersome, outdated books, I have the internet. Amazing!

Well, I had the internet. Due to technical difficulties beyond my control, I’ve been without internet access at home for four days. What do I miss the most? Not Facebook, not email ----- Answers! I don’t know how many times I’ve wondered or thought about something and not been able to look it up.  Nothing earth-shattering, just everyday curiosity. And that makes me realize how much I love having the world at my fingertips again.

What is the ‘morning star’? I saw it this morning while I was on the deck doing Qigong. Who was that familiar actor in the tv show from last night? What year were the schools in Raleigh integrated? Does Jamaica tea have any nutritional value? (as I’m enjoying a cold glass in yesterday’s heat) Could Alzheimer’s be classified an autoimmune disease?

I’ll probably never run out of questions. I hope I don’t. And I’ll never have all the answers. But I sure will be glad to get my internet back. I’m going to have quite a backlog at this rate.