Learning

When was the last time you saw a dead cat? The last one I saw I'd dragged out from underneath our house where it had crawled to die. Did curiosity kill it? If it did, then it means that cats ask questions. I believe they must, though many are not around long enough to get answers, and those that are say nothing. They need their nine lives and then some, as they inspect the tyre-tread of articulated trucks, inch along slender branches for a morsel of meat mixed with feathers and bones, slip into bed beside their roly-poly caregiver, or steal just the one biscuit of the Rottweiler newly installed next door.

Curiosity has led us humans to ask questions from the very beginning. It probably began when neurones inside the brain formed the question, “Hello! What's this nice soft thing just in front of my mouth?” Then the next thought, “Oh goody! There's another one on this side.” You know what the neurones came up with next? Yes. “I wonder what they taste like?” And egged on by warm fuzzies, lips found nipple, tongue tasted, throat swallowed and tummy warmed. Experience aided momentum. “I wonder what they're called?” probably came next, followed by, “And who do they belong to?”

Now comes the first twist in the convoluted story of us humans. The tiny face crumples into a scowl. Fists clench. Gums gnash. Little legs kick as thoughts form: I saw them first. They're mine now. Just let anybody try to take them away. I'll howl the house down and mess things up both front and back.
(This was long before silicon appeared on the scene. It became serious then, making it difficult for junior to sort the true from the false. The scar must have been a give away.)

By this time the neurones had set themselves on a course of question followed by decision that would last a lifetime. Experts vary as to just when our teenage scream-age begins. No one is certain when a male first thought, I wonder what she looks like when she removes...? Those thoughts have a built in repeater and can operate at any time and place. I'm assured these also occur in the female of our species too. Fair enough. I have it on good authority that questioning began with them: “Would you like an apple? Yes! Lovely, isn't it!”

There's a price to pay, of course. No gain without pain. A teacher once said to me, “You wouldn't put you finger into the fire just because you saw your friend doing it, would you?” I agreed with her then, but I was a fool. I may not have put my finger in a fire but I did test that the paint was wet, I used that word in front of Dad too, just the once, and later on, mixed my drinks as well. I've lived and learned since then.

For all of that, curiosity has led humans along the exciting path of exploration fed by what I call 'starters', something to arouse the curiosity. Some are visible, some are not. We're in the realm of the concrete and abstract now. We sail in vessels of steel; fly in heavier than air machines and even travel in a bullet train (a bit of a boast but fast anyway). Stonehenge is visible to man, as are the pyramids and other great monuments along with the scars of man's folly. Wales has its slag heaps, Russia it's Chernobyl; Hiroshima its Dome.

Time and circumstance sometimes have to merge before other things can be learned or seen. A few years ago I came across photographs of the earth's surface showing clear evidence of its disturbance both by man and nature. Someone's tracks across a field. The outline of where a building had once stood. Signs that a river had previously run that way, and so on.

A friend of mine, a teacher, was over-worked and seldom received recognition. Better trained teachers were given better pupils. He was given difficult pupils with learning and behaviour problems. My friend didn't, couldn't complain. He needed the job, had a family to support, a mortgage to pay and he did like teaching. The scars of the pupils were obvious but there were too many to receive the attention they needed. Eventually, my friend had a heart-attack. The few days he spent in hospital he learned that his heart showed evidence of scarring. You've been under strain for some time, he was told. It shows. Of course he'd been aware of the tension and strain but unaware of his scars. They were invisible. Not even those closest to him knew.

It's probably the same for many we pass in the street, work alongside, play sport with or know as our friends. They'll have scars and those who have experienced such things themselves will understand. It almost seems to be part of our learning. Shakespeare wrote: He jests at scars that never felt a wound, then followed it with: But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. An interesting contrast, wouldn't you say?

Dennis Crompton © 1998
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

Melting moments, Chernobyl

NB. The ominous threat of such a disaster occurring again seems to have diminished ... so maybe this item is too late, but it was certainly topical in 1997 when I wrote it.

The UN committee for the Control and Regulation of Nuclear Power in Commerce was meeting for the fifth session that year, yet they were still no nearer to a conclusion to bring about greater safeguards to prevent another Chernobyl accident, the main object of their meetings, some years after the event.

At one point in their proceedings with minor arguments raising the temperature and blood pressure of various members, an elderly lady walked with some difficulty made her way to the podium. She placed some notes on the stand and then seated herself on the chair beside it and waited. It took a little time before the chatter and general hubbub gradually ceased and with all eyes directed at her, they waited. The chairman was puzzled, the agenda had no one scheduled to speak at that time but decided that since the members had reached another impasse, a speaker might just be the break they needed. He looked over at her and indicated that she should begin.

Madame Balashov was nervous as she rose to speak but gained a measure of confidence as she went along, her voice quiet but firm with conviction. “An event has happened about which it is difficult for me to speak ad yet impossible for me to say nothing.” She paused, an unusual silence had fallen on the assembly. “The event to which I refer is of course Chernobyl. I was there a few days after the event and therefore speak from personal experience.

“Most of you are familiar with many technical notes on safety precautions to be observed where nuclear reactors exist. There is much talk of level playing fields if all countries observe the same precautions. Don’t fool yourselves!” The conviction with which she said this made most look up with renewed interest in what she was saying. She went on, “To be perfectly blunt, you’ll be living high on nothing if you believe that every country will. Precautions? Chernobyl officials took precautions but most of their decisions were made while dosed up on valium. The Peter principle held sway you see. The principle that states that individuals will rise to the level of their incompetence.

“What incompetence are we talking about here? The incompetence of setting in motion an experiment which was poorly planned and badly carried out. The incompetence of workers, apparently skilled, who shut down the reactor’s regulating systems. Then their incompetence when they withdrew most of the control rods from the reactor core. Let me repeat! They removed most of the rods controlling the reactor’s core. The result? Well, most of you know about that.”

She took a sip of water before continuing. “To acknowledge that 30,000 of the inhabitants of the nearest town, Pripyaf, were evacuated from their homes, and that’s all, is to acknowledge that you know nothing at all of what followed those evacuees. Each person was contaminated. I was contaminated. Our bodies had absorbed constant doses of radioactive iodine and strontium whilst we remained in that vicinity. I want you to think about that. Imagine yourself the parent of a son or a daughter who was there. Now that brings it home, makes it more personal doesn’t it? Makes it more urgent!

“Will you please think about the fact that even when the general level of contamination is low, radioactive iodine and strontium can cause real damage to human tissue? Damage to all the cells that make up flesh and blood and bodies. I don’t know how or why I’ve survived until now. I won’t bore you my problems but I want to tell you that my friend’s son was born with spina bifida. Plus he has no palate to the roof of his mouth, and he has no feet, just stumps. This boy is as bright as he can be in the times the drugs blot out the interminable pain which robs him of his sleep and the ordinary pleasures of life. Although he’s lucky compared to some.

“The thing is, my friend’s son creates a kind of guilt in me every time I see him. He didn’t have a say in what went on in our country, whereas I and millions of others did. That is what made me speak today. That, and for five days now I’ve sat and listened to speaker after speaker give facts and figures and information which takes you round in circles, dulls the senses and arrives at nowhere. I’ve listened to group argue over the simplest decisions to make, and I have to say this, you have lost the bloody plot. There is no urgency in your talks. No sense of horror, no understanding of what you could achieve if you had the will. Don’t forget, you speak for the contaminated young and innocent who cannot speak.

“I didn’t know that there’d be a time for me to speak and for you to listen but when found myself in Pripyaf in early May, I received a sentence. My sentence is that my body is being slowly consumed from inside. Do I have the right to speak after such a sentence? I leave that for you to judge. But the most important thing left for me to say is, have you listened and will what I have said make any difference?”

Then Madame Balashov picked up her notes and left.

Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpess.com 2013)