Opinion: Learning an education as an adult.
You’ve heard that expression, the one that goes: “I was today years old before I learned that …”?
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Well, I was today years old when I learned that Plymouth Rock isn’t an island comparable to, say, Newfoundland, which affectionately goes by the nickname, “The Rock”. Plymouth Rock isn’t some significant promontory that a ship like the Mayflower could draw up alongside. No, Plymouth Rock is a small boulder. A stepping stone, you might call it. And it wasn’t the spot where the pilgrims first set foot in North America. No, it’s just a rock. The pilgrims, apparently, made landfall in Provincetown, in Cape Cod, about a month earlier. Plymouth Rock had nothing to do with anything. Nonetheless, you can see this vaunted rock displayed in Pilgrim Memorial State Park on the shore of Plymouth Harbour, Massachusetts.
How, I wondered, had this fact escaped me? If nothing else, Plymouth Rock comes up in comedy sketches with some frequency. Now, I don’t spend any time thinking about Plymouth Rock, but recently there’s been a lot of late-breaking information that has me quite surprised. Some of the discoveries are minor, other revelations have me wondering how I made it this far into adulthood without some sort of conservatorship.
Did you know that babies don’t have kneecaps? They don’t! Now, I’ve had two of the creatures myself, and this was news to me. Apparently, at birth, all we have is a wee plate of cartilage. Somewhere between ages two and six, that cartilage starts to ossify — turn to bone — and we develop the structure known as the patella. Stopping now to reflect on this information, I realize how uncomfortable crawling would be if there was a fully developed kneecap involved, but I was today years old before I’d given the matter any thought.
Let me relate another moment that had me feeling the full Neanderthal. I recently watched a friend dealing with an excess of eggs. She had a full fresh dozen, but she also had three left over from the previous dozen. Now, if it had been me, I’d have just kept that quarter of a dozen eggs in the old egg carton. Not this clever gal. She tossed the almost empty carton and turned the new egg carton over so that the three eggs could nest in the reverse hollows of the new carton. You’d have thought I’d witnessed nuclear fission, such was my astonishment. It had never occurred to me to turn over an egg carton, and yet I’m allowed to operate a car and have a passport.
I will tell you a story in full confidence that you won’t use it against me at my mental competency trial. Deal? Okay, it’s from years ago. I’d bought a big digital clock. Took it home. Plugged it in. Programmed it. Oddly, the clock seemed to always read 12:00. You could faintly make out the correct time under those numbers, but they seemed to be in constant competition with 12:00. It was annoying. After a week, I decided to take the clock back. Clearly, it was defective.
Oh, I still remember this moment. I knew the hardware store owner where I had bought the clock. “Bernard”, I said, “there’s something wrong with this clock. It always seems to read midnight or noon.” Bernard politely took the clock from me. In a simple, swift movement, he removed the plastic film from the face of the clock and with it the large red numbers that read 12:00.
It’s moments like this when I know the wheel is turning, but I suspect that the hamster may have died.
This week’s question for readers:
Question: What surprising lessons came to you late in life?
Last week’s question for readers:
Question: What separated you from your cash when you were a kid? Did you succumb to the lure of sea-monkeys or the like?
• In 1962, age 10, my weekly allowance had gone up to 25 cents. I saved up a whole dollar and bought myself a Frontier Log Cabin. I got our foldable card table ready to build it. The cabin arrived in a 9×12-inch envelope. This was the first and last time I made a bet. I put another 25 cents on the PNE Crown and Anchor game and he just took it away.
R.L. Read
• One 45 RPM record every Saturday morning for 95 cents at the local record store. Oh, the joy. Unparalleled.
Melissa MacKay
• My dad was a toy buyer for a mail order catalog. I was his toy tester (Sea Monkeys held my attention for a nanosecond). Other than baseball cards, my pennies were spent on marbles made from semi-precious stones. I expanded my dad’s childhood collection, which he started at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. I still have it, although it now includes hand-made glass marbles made by several Northwest Coast artists. There is magic in maintaining a little childlike wonder.
Pamela Cohen
• I fell for the picture of the papa sea monkey sitting in his easy chair and reading the paper. But by sending away 20 Mary Jane wrappers, I received a stamp album and envelope of stamps that started me on years of stamp collecting.
Judy Bickart
• My young son Gary was thrilled to get his Sea-Monkey package, bought with his own paper round money. The thrill did not last long, but he went on to keep seahorses which gobbled up sea monkeys.
Joan Bywater
• Those Sea Monkeys were a huge scam. When I was a kid in the 1960s, I saw their ads all the time, but I was too young to figure out how to get them, and my parents showed no interest in helping me. I realized later that I would have received brine shrimp. This guy and his advertising were a disgusting scam foisted on young children and should have been shut down by the authorities, yet those ads went on for years.
Scott McGillivray
• Mo Jo’s. Two for a penny. Jawbreakers, three for a penny. And candy cigarettes. Oh my!
Jeff Owens
• A paper shirt from Frito campaign 1964, starring The Frito Bandito for a dollar plus two proof of purchase. It came as a large square of stiff-coated orange/brown paper roughly surged stitched with an opening for the head and arms. I was so excited that it was made from paper. But it looked ridiculous, so I tossed it. Never showed it to anyone.
Sam Remer
• I was nine when I wrote away and paid $2.75 for the hardcover Hardy Boys Detective Handbook. I first made pages of a grid with carbon paper, then fingerprinted the whole family, identifying whorls, arches and ridge patterns. A few chapters later, I made a tire print in our gravel driveway using a shoe box frame and Plaster of Paris. The Handbook, my collection of Hardy Boys books and the tire print (labeled with date, time and location) still make me smile. Hard-earned money well spent.
Fern Hubbard
• Absolutely, I ordered the sea monkeys, and waited, dreaming of my own little kingdom of tiny people living in their watery castle. I think my parents were very wise, allowing me to use my allowance for this venture. It probably saved me from even more foolish investments later on.
Name withheld
• In the 1930s, my father told me that he sent sixpence and a stamped addressed letter for a guaranteed insect killer. What he received was two small pieces of wood and instructions to place the insect between the wood and then press together.
Daine Kelman
• I recall my friend and I sending away for the “Money Maker”, whose two squeegee rollers turned blank paper into bank notes. While we waited for it to arrive, we discussed what we would do with our new-found wealth. Only when it arrived did we realize it was a conjuror’s trick.
Greg DePaco
• I loved those little sacks of “gold” which, in reality, were the most awful bits of chewing gum. It was the bag with its yellow drawstring that attracted me … and my allowance.
K. Chen