Curiosity
Now that I’m in my late 50s, I find myself more often reflecting on life. I sometimes flash to parallels between my actions in early life and how that influenced my later life.
I grew up in Wyckoff, a suburban town in Bergen County, the northernmost county in New Jersey that’s nestled next to and just west of New York City. It’s there that I attended public school from kindergarten through the 10th grade, my “formative years”, so to speak.
I was in the advanced class from the first grade on. We were the ones that were pushed, that the most was expected of. We were to be the future businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc, the educators felt.
In the 5th and 6th grades, our entire class subscribed to the New York Times, which was handed out as we entered our class in the morning. In those days, except for lunch and gym, we never left that one classroom and we had one teacher. Our first subject of the day was always “Current Events”. In it, students would raise their hand, then begin a discussion based on an article in that day’s NY Times.
I loved Current Events. I was the first to raise my hand, covering subjects from the space race to President Kennedy to the United Nations to famines in Africa. Little did I realize that my voracious appetite for reading the newspaper would 30 years later lead to me becoming a newspaper sportswriter, then sports editor, and even publisher.
I also was crazy about Geography. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the states, then all the countries of the world. Give me a blank map and I could fill in just about every state and country and most of their capitols. Later in life, this curiosity would lead me to live as an adult in Florida, California, Oregon, Maine, Montana, North Carolina, and St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.
The other subject that I excelled in was Mathematics. I’m almost embarrassed to say that I put little effort into it because it came so easy. I was a wiz, but I can’t take credit due to hard work. I guess my brain was just set up for math. I ended up majoring in math in college, and my abilities in math have been a major factor in my life.
Needless to say, I usually got “A’s” in the three subjects I mentioned. The credit goes to my curiosity. I wanted to know more and more. “How?” and “Why?” drove my brain to dissect subjects, dig further, learn more. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it pushed me to excel.
- Mountain Man