Minstrel’s Log

Consider the following two tests for insanitee:

(1) Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.

(2) Plug a sink, turn on the taps, and when the water is overflowing, ask the subject to clean it up. If they don’t first turn off the tap, they’re insane.

Okay, so where does that leave us?

Well, consider eating. We get hungry, and we eat. Then we get hungry again, and we eat. Then again we get hungry, and we eat. This cycle continues for our entire lives, yet never do we find a way to stop getting hungry in the first place.

Are we all insane?

Recently, I realized an old objection of mine to Public School.

Simply put, I did not learn anything there that my parents did not already know.

I
remember a specific instance (before I had realized this, probably in
the first couple of grades) when I came home one day very excited. I
had learned a new word in French: “Noel” means “Christmas”. I felt like
I had some wonderful piece of new knowledge that I couldn’t wait to
share.

Anxious to not only start paying back my parents for
all the cool stuff they’ve taught me over the years, but also to show
that my time at school wasn’t being wasted, I asked my Mum if she knew
how to say Christmas in French.

Of course, she did. My Dad would
have as well, but I didn’t ask him, as I could see by the ease in which
she answered my question that I wouldn’t have been sharing anything new
with him either.

Yes, I was deflated, but (to forestall certain
objections) a different response would not have helped; the real issue
was that I had spent all this time away from my family - the ones who
knew me best, cared the most about me - and I hadn’t even learned
anything new.