In 1975 I spent second grade at McKenna Elementary in Yelm, Washington.
Thinking back thirty-eight years, memories come to mind. Marbles at recess. A kid whose dad worked heavy equipment always had “steelies,” big ball-bearing marbles that bashed the bejeezies out of our glass contenders. Then there was the girl I liked, Carmen Prosser. Movie Friday was always good. I got second-place in the free-throw competition (didn’t tell my parents because I wasn’t first), and the big mystery of postage stamps.
Yes, postage stamps. One day our teacher took the class through a letter-writing exercise. She told us where to put the “To” address. Then the “From” address. Then the stamp. “The stamp must be in the upper right,” she said.
I raised my hand. “Why?” It seemed a good question. Why not stamp the middle? Or the upper left?
“That’s just the way it is,” she said. There were no internet searches to unravel the mystery, so it remained just that. For a long time.
Today, if I were the teacher, I’d explain. The stamp goes there for the same reason traffic lights are red, yellow and green: to create working standards. To get everyone on the same page, people decided, out of thin air, that stamps go upper right and traffic lights come in three colors. Throughout history, standard-makers decide all sorts of things so we can get on with our lives with less confusion.
I don’t know if I was the only kid asking that question, but it does reveal what drives me. There’s this visceral need to understand why we do what we do. To know how we work, how the world works, and why. In this sense I’ve always been a root-level thinker, just like any kid who asks why in sincerity instead of just trying to annoy.
In many ways, I’ve never grown up. I’m still that kid in class, asking why.
