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)
