Curiosity is, well, a curious thing. Curiosity is not a
destination in and of itself, but a means to the discovery of new ideas, new
emotions, even new worlds, as in my case. Curiosity does not passively expect
others to introduce themselves; it does not sit and twiddle its thumbs at the
bases of walls it could be scaling; it does not turn its back on a red light.
Curiosity waits patiently, knowing that the light will certainly turn green.
Curiosity does not merely observe: curiosity does. And this doing just might
get you into trouble.
The first time in my life that curiosity came into conflict
with reality was at the age of five. At that point, I should have already
joined the ranks of thousands of five-year-old girls with aspiring careers as
Barbie fashion designers. I should have had every single Disney princess movie
memorized, down to the dance sequences, dress choices, and soundtracks. Of
course, these qualities would have described me accurately if I were indeed a
stereotypical five-year-old girl. In truth, I more personified the stereotype
of a middle-school nerd than that of a sparkly dress-obsessed child.
On my first day of kindergarten, accompanied with tearful
goodbyes, my parents released their firstborn child into the frightful world of
ABC’s, crayons, and naptime that is elementary school. They probably held much
more fear that morning than I. I possessed too much excitement to even give a
passing thought to fear, for on that very day I would become an official
“school kid”—the coolest title I could have ever imagined for myself. I wore
that title and my ugly Christian school uniform with as much pride as my little
five-year-old heart could muster. Walking into that big classroom covered in
charts of every kind—weather, counting, alphabet, chores, even bathroom—was
like awaking from a five-year dream. With so much newness to explore and learn,
all thoughts of preschool (how childish!) were far behind me. I could already
tell: here in kindergarten, things mattered. I mattered; I was a big kid now,
after all.
My eyes darted around the classroom, frantically searching
for the one thing that would solidify my identity as a kindergartener. Then, I
saw it. Down the row of desks, on the far side of the room, it lit up my eyes
like it was actually glowing: my nametag. “Whitney Seidel” it read, in thick,
block Sharpie-marker letters; I could read it from where I stood. I skipped (or
scampered; at five, I’m not quite sure I had mastered the art of skipping)
through the rows to my very own wooden desk—right next to the teacher’s desk,
no less—complete with a miniature plastic blue chair. Gone were the days of
plushy foam mats on the floor, my teacher towering over us, as if she was the
only person in the preschool privileged enough to own her own chair. Now, I owned a chair and a desk, with a
laminated nametag to prove it. It was no matter to me that every other student
in my class received the same treatment; I probably didn’t even notice this
fact. All I knew is that that nametag made me one of a kind. Special.
I don’t remember much else of what happened that day. Most
likely, I was introduced to my teacher, became best friends with thirty other
kindergarteners, and perhaps listened to a lesson on how we, the big kids,
should behave in school. I don’t recall behaving badly or being reprimanded in
any way; I must have been paying attention to the lesson on proper kindergarten
conduct, at least.
When I returned home, however, I realized that my perception
of how well I had listened and acted that day was badly misconstrued.
After a grand first-day-of-school dinner, I sat my parents
and my younger sister and brother down for a talk about the finer points of
kindergarten life. Somewhere in between snack time and naptime, the phone rang.
My parents left to answer it; when they returned, the look on their faces was a
curious mixture of disappointment and pride that I could not comprehend.
“Whitney…” they began, and then paused. “Whitney, Mrs.
Eppehimer just called us on the phone.” Not recalling any wrongdoing on my
part, I just nodded my head and asked, “Why?”
“Whitney…she called to tell us that you were reading things
on her desk and not paying attention to the things she was saying. Do you
remember doing that today?”
Now, I remembered. And it was at that exact
moment that I learned one of my hardest lessons growing up. You see, up until
that moment, I didn’t know words had boundaries. The fact that the things on my
teacher’s desk—lesson plans, teaching books, personal notes, even—were private
and not for my eyes shattered my five-year-old perception of the world. I had
learned to read as a very small child, a toddler; by the time I walked into
that kindergarten classroom, I was reading on an upper-elementary level. My
desire to explore and discover through literature was insatiable. So when I saw
those words on my teacher’s desk, I was not thinking “private,” “keep away,” or
“not for you.” Instead, I was thinking “New words! Words that have never been
put together in this precise arrangement, an arrangement that I will most
likely never lay eyes on ever again! I must take advantage of this
opportunity!” Of course, the thoughts that ran through my little mind were
probably not quite so profound; “Ooh! Words!” would justifiably sum up my
reaction to what I saw. But now, though I was so young, reality had set in like
a dam, an impassible edifice holding back the flood of all the wonderful
stories I had ever discovered. Some words were not made for me to read. Some
doors to new worlds had been slammed in my face and locked tightly, the key
held just out of my childish reach. I stared forlornly at those closed doors:
how could something so wonderful as words to read only belong to one person?
When I returned to school the next day, I
stayed away from the reading material on my teacher’s desk. I behaved as a
perfect student should. I listened intently to everything about the alphabet that
was taught—and couldn’t wait to return home to my books, where I could delight
in that simple alphabet transformed into entities quite complex, into living
and breathing and dancing stories.
The next twelve years of school fell into
this sad routine. I would be taught something I already knew or something I
could learn very quickly; most of my school days would find me studying on my
own or otherwise ignoring what the teacher had to say. I became bored and
frustrated with the education system in which I was placed. I struggled to keep
the curiosity that so characterized my childhood personality alive.
So I turned back to my books; back to the
stories I could quote word-for-word without even picking up the dog-eared
pages; back to the characters I loved and considered my closest companions;
back to the worlds I had explored even more than my own. It was no difference
to me whether I was journeying through the woods with talking animals, becoming
accustomed to life in middle school long before I arrived there, or traveling
to foreign lands on the backs of dragons, for each and every new setting felt
like home. I learned there, more than anything textbooks had dryly attempted. I
learned how to laugh all the way down to my soul; I learned how to cry, tears
falling because I felt something deep inside me break. I learned how to fall in
love, and how to forgive when love itself fell. I learned how the world fit
together from the perspectives of hundreds of authors and thousands of
characters, each shaping my own perspective of how life is supposed to be
really lived.
And, as a five-year-old girl who cared more about the size
of her library than the size of her dress collection grew into a college student passionately studying literature, I learned that curiosity, my own
infinity, would eternally exist in the pages of my books.
