The Curiosity of Children

This story may be controversial and I have debated the last two weeks whether I would tell it or not because it is a story that was never mentioned since the day it happened. But I have committed to tell all the stories I can recall whether humorous, serious or lessons learned, even the first time I remember really getting in trouble even worse than the "Chicken Thieving" story.

What made me think of it was a seminar I went to last week called "Think Like Da Vinci, Innovate Like Edison. One of the things the presenter expounded on was the importance of curiosity and how all the great people like Da Vinci and Edison were curious and that as little children we were curious about everything but somehow when we get older we loose some of that curiosity and that we should all keep the curiosity alive. But there are some things where curiosity must be controlled by our internal knowledge of right and wrong our conscience.

Well here is the story I was very young and this is not a story that has been retold at all so it is completely from my recollection as a 4 or 5 year old. It made an impression because we (my brother Ken and I) got in a lot of trouble as well as the other kids in our neighborhood.

Several kids in our neighborhood ages 4 and 5 years old, boys and girls were playing in the back yard of a vacant house. I don't remember what we were playing or how it got started but one of the kids pulled their pants down. Now Ken and I had no sisters at this time and it was the first time for me at least that I realized/found out that boys and girls were different. Before long we all had our pants down comparing each other. Pretty soon we heard mothers calling, so we all pulled our pants up and ran to our respective homes. It seems the lady who lived next door to the vacant house happened to hear us and looked out her window and saw what we were doing and called all our mothers and reported the scandalous goings on.

Upon arriving home we all got spankings and scoldings like we had never before experienced. I guess we felt a bit naughty doing what we were doing but none of us had any idea it was as bad as it was. None of us as far as I know ever did it again even though I don't think any of us understood why what we had done was so terrible. In those days such things just were not discussed. I'm afraid in today's world even 4 and 5 year olds would not be so innocent as we were.