Curious Gina

I am thankful for my curiosity. I've always been a curious person. I never minded going the extra mile when it came to research for school, because looking up some new information would inspire me to find something in the work that actually interested me. My appetite and aptitude for research taught me to be an independent, lifelong learner.

I must also credit a family who valued education, and knowledge for its own sake. I remember my brother quizzing me - just for fun - on everything from planets and state capitals to Star Trek episodes and '50 music! These exercises sharpened my memory and reinforced my interest in knowing things.

Today this "curse" most often manifests itself when I'm watching a TV show or movie. It will make me crazy if I can't remember from where I know an actor, or his or her name! All I can say is, "Thank God for IMDb and TV.com!" I love TV and movie trivia...the more trivial the better! I take great pride in knowing such things as this: Dan Futterman - an actor I know best from his role on Judging Amy - wrote the screenplay for the movie Capote. He is married to Anya Epstein, granddaughter of Philip Epstein who, with his brother, Julius, wrote the screenplay for a little movie you may have heard of called...Casablanca... I live for that kind of useless information! I know...more symptomatology of my disorder(s)...

I can't think about the subject of curiosity without remembering a record I got in a collection of Disney albums when I was seven years old. It was Sterling Holloway narrating a couple of Rudyard Kipling's Just-So Stories. One of them was The Elephant's Child. Basically, it is a fanciful story about the purpose - and ramifications - of curiosity. The story is fraught with unusual phrases and unique language. I have always remembered the phrase 'satiable curiosity. I assume it is a poetic take on the word insatiable, which is what I have always considered my curiosity to be. Here's a sampling from Rudyard Kipling's The Elephant's Child:

In the High and Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn't pick up things with it. But there was one Elephant—a new Elephant — an Elephant's Child — who was full of 'satiable curiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions…

One fine morning in the middle of the Precession of the Equinoxes this 'satiable Elephant's Child asked a new fine question that he had never asked before. He asked, "What does the crocodile have for dinner?" Then everybody said, "Hush!" in a loud and dredful tone, and they spanked him immediately and directly, without stopping, for a long time.

By and by, when that was finished, he came upon Kolokolo Bird sitting in the middle of a wait-a-bit thornbush, and he said, "My father has spanked me, and my mother has spanked me; all my aunts and uncles have spanked me for my 'satiable curtiosity; and still I want to know what the Crocodile has for dinner!"

The Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, "Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out."

That very next morning, when there was nothing left of the Equinoxes, because the Precession had preceded according to precedent, this 'satiable Elephant's Child took a hundred pounds of bananas (the little short red kind), and a hundred pounds of sugar-cane (the long purple kind), and seventeen melons (the greeny-crackly kind), and said to all his dear families, "Good-bye. I am going to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to find out what the Crocodile has for dinner." And they all spanked him once more for luck, though he asked them most politely to stop.

Trippy writing, huh? I was listening to that as a seven-year-old. Explains a lot about me, perhaps...

I am thankful for the curiosity that has led me to wonder and learn about so many things. It has served me well so far, and I think it will prove to be an asset toward keeping my brain sharp throughout my life.

After all, isn't that the purpose of education in the first place...to learn how to learn?