This past weekend, as I was standing behind my apartment and staring up at the trees that laid bare by the winter’s cold, I came to an important understanding about my life: I cannot have children.
This sudden awareness of my procreational limitations was not an epiphany gained from watching the neighborhood squirrels. Rather, it came about when I realized that I would not be able to explain to my child why leaves fall off trees in the winter. I wouldn’t be able to explain it, because I just don’t know anymore. I know at one point I did, but after reaching adulthood, my concern shifted from why the leaves fall from the trees to how I could avoid vacuuming up my living room when I inevitably track them onto my floor after they’ve fallen.
I envision little Johnny coming up to me, pointing to the empty branches and inquiring, “Where did the leaves go?” and then the inevitable, “Why?” And I also imagine how quickly my brain will kick into action to try to come up with a good story. I cannot stand the thought of feeling stupid in front of anyone, let alone my own offspring, but I am also not very creative. I don’t think little Johnny would ever make it as a botanist believing that trees are so obsessed with fashion that they drop their leaves before the impending snow to avoid wearing white after Labor Day.
Kids want to know about the world in which they live, and it is during childhood that their world is expanding the most. While Michael Jackson may appreciate children’s innocence, I don’t especially enjoy being reminded of the things that I have forgotten. I remember fewer and fewer things these days, which would leave me with only one option when forced to explain anything to my future kid: lying. I don’t have the heart to lie to little Johnny.
For the most part, my heart wouldn’t be able to take it when he found out the truth—and then remembered that I was the one who lied to him about how hamsters running in place on a wheel next to some ice cubes were responsible for making the air conditioner work.
Unlike ignorant youngsters, I can get by without knowing how something works, so long as it continues to function normally. I accept that my microwave heats food in under three minutes with only a vague knowledge of how actual waves cook my frozen lasagna from the inside out. The sun rises and sets everyday in my world, and I am comfortable enough with the constant rotation at 26,000 miles per hour necessary for day and night to remain regular that I don’t even notice. These details have become routine, predictable aspects of life, and I grew to accept them without really thinking about how they operate. Unfortunately, however, I’ve also lost my ability to recall them.
This is not to say that I have stopped questioning things once and for all. I’ve merely reached a plateau where I wonder about what most people would consider bizarre matters that don’t really make a difference in the grand scheme of things-things like the origins of nail polish. Knowing how my cellular phone works might be helpful the next time I drop it and it stops working, but I couldn’t care less about Kyocera electronics when I think about the fact that people are putting paint on their fingernails for no good reason. The how and why of nail polish fascinates me far more than those things that actually impact my daily life. I never cared much about Chinese history, but after reading that nail polish was invented 5,000 years ago in China, I’m ready to start my inquiry into why rich emperors decided vegetable-dyed beeswax on their fingertips was a worthwhile thing to do. As a person who neither wears nail polish nor is Chinese, I must say that the reasons behind my newfound curiosity baffle me a bit-nail polish doesn’t matter all that much.
I put most of the blame for my unconventional interests on college. I spend so much time in school focusing on issues that don’t actually deal with my own day-to-day existence that I’m conditioned to ignore what’s going on around me, and I assume that this will continue throughout the rest of my life. So I guess I’ll always be wandering around oblivious to how things work and taking for granted the elementary things that occur in life—which makes me sounds an awful lot like a child myself.
Christopher Trott is a senior in the School of Foreign Service and associate editor of the Georgetown Voice. Forget MJ—He’s the undisputed king of pop.
