SMRT

 This is something of a confession, and it will pain some of  those closest to me. 

I thought I was done with learning. That was one of the reasons I decided to become a teacher. I figured that should just about make me an apex predator on the knowledge scale. Nothing else for me to learn here. I'll be dispensing ideas from here on out, thank you very much. 

But it turns out that there are still so many things I don't know. Which is why in the middle of just about every week at school all the teachers gather in a room and learn a little bit more. Over the summers, when we send the kids away to go play in the sprinklers and try to forget all that we have taught them, we go to seminars and conferences where we learn more things. I suppose this has the effect of keeping us all ahead of the average fourth grader, but still, when will it be over? To paraphrase Working In A Coal Mine, "How long will this go on?"

I was a precocious lad, who read War of the Worlds and Dracula and Frankenstein before I was twelve. I was the kid who infamously read Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain before I entered fourth grade. For Christmas each year my parents would buy me film encyclopedias which I would read, cover to cover. As if they were assigned reading. You didn't need to tell me that I was sitting with the "smart group." 

I knew it. 

By the time I got to high school, some of that specialness began to wear off. Being a good student and a teacher's pet was all well and good but there was this little matter of a social life. I got into college, twice. Once when I wasn't quite ready for it and once again when I figured it had to be better than working at Arby's. 

See? I really was smart. 

In college I studied a lot of things. I got a liberal arts education. Nothing that translated into what you might call a trade, but I did amass enough knowledge to put in a couple years' service at the University of Colorado Trivia Bowl. As it turned out, all those hours spent in my formative years paying strict attention to the movies, TV and music that played around me was useful, if only enough to reach third place. 

And of course I have all those clever friends. The ones who read books and watched TV as well. They still want to talk to me about something they learned. Which has the annoying habit of becoming something else for me to learn. Then there's the matter of the son whom I raised who went out and learned things about cars and video games and movies I missed. He wants to pile on that heap of understanding that has been full for some time now. 

Or is it? Maybe it has more to do with being lazy than being too smart. Steve Miller once suggested that the question to everyone's answer is usually asked from within. That comes from Jungle Love. In case you were curious.