SDW - 5 THE MYSTERY OF ME

As a young child, I remember enjoying riding on boards, all kinds, but especially any little vehicle with its wheels having varying arrangements, soaking up the physics of it.  The board game Mouse Trap was cool until about the third time I played and saw that it just did the same thing every time.  But Mouse Trap was an important primer on potential energy and entropy.  What I really didn’t like was being thrown against the door of the car as it went around a corner, and don’t get me started on tricycles, didn’t like them, and I wouldn’t have anything to do with something that had training wheels.  Now a bicycle, that’s a righteous machine that resolves all of its forces straight down through the frame and into the road. 

As early as I can remember, I carried a vague conviction that I was meant to make a contribution to knowledge.  Then again, I also believed that all of the people around me might be a Potemkin village of image projections surrounding just me.  I envisioned pioneering something, or making a new thing that would make our lives better.  Nobody I knew did that kind of thing and I didn’t think it would be allowed.  Of course, it couldn’t interfere with my preparations to become a professional water skier.  I devoted hours, turning over the physics of sailing, examining the problems involved with two wings flowing in separate fluids, or how a sailboat could go faster than the wind speed. 

I was fascinated by electronics, but couldn’t get beyond adding another speaker to my radio.  I even took a correspondence course.  I got hung up on where all the electrons and holes go.  And why wouldn’t my glue-together model airplanes fly?  How could airliners possibly fly?  As a kid, I was drawn to hairbrained contraptions from kite riding to submersibles, and other misadventures.  I got through high school, avoiding lasting friendships, and fully ignorant of self-knowledge.