Wings:

   1. Unlimited Intellectual curiosity:
         (curiosity that leads to acquisition of useful
         knowledge)

   2.  Unconstrained imagination & uninhibite  
        creativity. 

   3. Few human-created prejudices 

Anchors:
1. Knowledge base: Yet to gain broad & deep useful
    knowledge & skills

2. Experience base: limited, but rapidly growing
    useful, learning & comparing.     Family/friends/school impacts: may be good or bad.

3. Destructive school system: the unrecognized threat of public education’s memorization/testing damage which: 
   1) crushes intellectual curiosity, 
   2) stifles imagination,
   3) suppresses initiative & creativity,
   4) wastes full potential of many youths
   5) undermines confidence & self-worth
   6) foolishly isolates each subject’s content from all others
       destroying their natural interconnectedness
   7) Often wastes years of student’s time better spent
       actually learning useful knowledge & gaining useful
       skills & experience.

1. Family

It all started innocently enough,             but then ...  

I was raised in a middle-class family of a college-educated father and high school-educated mother who apparently always resented my father's education, his industry's high regard, his warmly engaging personality, and his major corporate management success. 

In our last Father/son chat he told me that she had often ridiculed his failure to have achieved even more.  

 Ironically, IMO, I believe her phony personality was the reason he had not.

My Mother: Early on I was aware that she had little regard for me, yet great protective affection for my younger brother. Her maligned efforts destroyed him and our family.

My ‘neighborhood’ friends:

When I was 6 my family moved into our ‘own’ home. While my parents moved us in, I remember taking my sister for a walk around the neighborhood and being chased by those who later become my ‘friends.’ Looking back at that very decent middle-class neighborhood of Eastman Kodak middle-management families. I never understood why. Don't now.

My tenuous, ‘friends relationship’ persisted until I made good friends later in high school. 

Anecdote: Ostracized, but why?: I remember having to look out the window early Saturday afternoons to see ' my gang' sneaking together to go to the movies without me, then I, racing out to go with them.

Pathetically sad as I remember now.   Once, apparently deeply engrossed in a movie, I looked to my right to discover my ‘friends’, en masse, had quietly got up and moved seats.

Funny, in one sense, but emotionally crushing in another, particularly when coupled with my antagonistic mother-brother cabal. 

Even now I am mystified, yet on reflection, I see the roots of my contentment with self-isolation.

Anecdote: my solo time: In my pre-teen & years I frequently solo-roamed a huge wooded area & cemetary alongside Rochester, NY's  Genesee River adjacent to my neighborhood. I knew all its trails intimately and my steep, hillside trails down to ‘my refuge caves' where I spent time ‘thinking.’ I was comfortable by myself in this wooded-mental refuge. 

For the challenge, I would sneak up undetected within feet of Boy Scouts at their nighttime fireside gathering deep in this wood.

At 10 & 12, my father shipped me alone for summers to my mother’s parents on Manitoba, Canada’s plains, as my Grandma quipped, “…to get me away from my mother for at least the summers.

Most wonderful period of my early life. Loving, warm huge grandmother, taciturn Scotch (Edinburg direct ) grandfather & wonderful manly role model, Uncle Bill. 

Grandma's ginger snap cookies cooked on her giant cast iron cook stove. Grandpa in his ubiquitous 3 piece wool suits,  vest n'all, smoking his deeply curved 'bent' style pipe with a shot of whisky every morning. And ...PIK.  Uncle Bill, tall, slim Abe Lincoln-like; fisherman, hunter, local hockey legend and his lovely much younger girlfriend, soon-to-be wife, Ellie. 

Wonderful boyhood adventures: sleeping in a tent with Uncle Bill’s dog, Pete, fishing, shooting rifles, big County Fair, boating & fishing; constantly in boyish trouble working in my grandfather’s store then, 70 years ago. Even then it was almost an antique small downtown grocery store now displayed in the local Brandon, Manitoba museum.

1. Could I, a Pre-teen, have understood my mother’s dislike of me? ..or why? 

I recognized her dislike of me by 4 or 5 and that she & my brother were a cabal of my enemies, but I never understood ‘Why.’ 

Did my mother /brother cabal teach me to mistrust such relationships? Looking back, I suspect so, but not that I could articulate then.

It did make me reach out to my friend, Eddie's dying mother as a trusted mentor & confidant thru long conversations. In teens, it pushed me to rebellious friends. Her tyrannical control distanced my father from me.

Lack of mother, family and true neighborhood friends made nature's outdoors a welcome refuge.

Did my family estrangement make me isolate myself? Yes, but, at school church elsewhere. I had what I believe were good normal relations and friends.

Was she the cause of my academic failures?  Did her ridicule & lack of support leave me blind to other opportunities like singing, acting, sports, etc.?      I didn’t think so then, nor now.

I never guessed that her negativity undermined my confidence & self worth because I always seemed to excel outside school. 

Only as an adult did I look back and presume to guess at her low self-worth & its source; perhaps when she compared herself to my gentle father's high professional status & respect. 

     Anecdote:  6 decades later, I asked her 95 year old sister, why my mother was as I described her. My aunt looked at me in disbelief —-  she had no idea what I was talking about.

Anecdote: Summers in Canada:  At 10 & 12, my father shipped me for summers to my mother’s parents on Manitoba, Canada’s plains to, as Grandma quipped, “…to get me away from my mother for at least the summers.” 

Most wonderful period of my early life. Loving, warm huge grandmother, taciturn Scotch (Edinburg direct ) grandfather & wonderful manly role model, Uncle Bill.

Wonderful boyhood adventures: tent sleep in a tent with uncle’s dog, Pete, fishing, shooting rifles, big County Fair, boating & constantly in boyish trouble working in my grandfather’s then almost antique (70 years ago) small downtown grocery store. 

Yet, in spite of the solo 3 day railroad trip to Grandma’s … no specific desire to travel for travel’s sake.

2. School

Even in kindergarten I was often expelled from class for disruptive behavior. I hated school’s boring regimentation. 

      Anecdote 1: In kindergarten, 1) I was 86’d from the playhouse, 2) scolded for blocking Office Clerk’s entry with large (2' x2') play blocks, 3) would not sleep quietly on my blanket during ‘milk’ break.

      Anecdote 2: In 2rd Grade, I had my own chair in the hallway outside our classroom. Later, In 3rd grade, I was moved to a different teacher’s class, but still had a worn path 😃 to the Principal who once flicked my ear with his finger & told my mother, "Scott is just not very intelligent.”      By 3rd grade I had been taught I was a failure - a bad kid. 

    Anecdote 3: In 4^th grade, my Math teacher threw chalk at me hitting me just below the left eye?  Today's lawsuit lottery. 🥲

     Anecdote 4: Later, in 4^th grade, my father, before I was expelled, placed me in private catholic Nazareth Elementary boys school, to hopefully re-direct my path. My bad behavior briefly continued until school’s Principal, Sister Mary Patrice, whacked me over the knuckles with a wooden ruler & advised that I had 2 weeks to ‘shape up’ or I was expelled.    I shaped up.

Then back in public high school’s 8^th grade hopefully rehabilitated, I still hated school, warred with my mother, enjoyed Cub Scouts and my church group. I lasted until thru 10th grade, when Dad removed me, before expulsion, to Manlius Military School. 

1. Could I have ‘understood’ my father’s counsel to ‘get good grades’ if I wanted to succeed? 

What did that even mean?

My father had been a successful major American corporation executive who drummed college into my brain. It was the only path to mythological ‘success” , he argued.

Ironically, such counsel may have even less relevance in today’s merging of cellphone Internet access, games-based learning-software & AI as that combo hopefully replaces destructive public education.

2. Did I consciously recognize my school’s boredom, my classroom disruptions, and my academic & familial failings?

No, I simply accepted them as ‘me’ without assigning direct blame to anyone including myself.

My solution was my imagination’s classroom day-dreams — my ‘secret’ refuge … and, of course, distracting others & generally screwing around.

My self-worth was probably shakey although I probably couldnot have defined the concept.

My solution was my imagination’s day-dreams — my ‘secret’ refuge … besides, of course,   distracting others & generally screwing around.

3. Who did I blame for my academic failures & apparent behavioral issues?

No one. I simply accepted them as ‘me’ without assigning blame to anyone including my mother & brother. 

As a child, I simply presumed that parents & school was ‘my world’, and never thought to question it. I knew I liked Eddy Wagner’s mom a lot before she, unfortunately, died early. She and I could talk for hours.

I never liked my mother or brother. Always suspect. Always my danger zone.

4. Should/could I have contemplated my future & self corrected? 

Perhaps, but as a fledgling human, I was not coping well with the present, so how could I imagine the future let alone how to prepare, plan, or alter it.

The future was , I suspect, simply the next required thing: 

 “Up in the mornin' and out to school
  The teacher is teachin' the golden rule
  American history and practical math
   You studyin' hard and hopin' to pass.  
                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   Soon as three o'clock rolls around
   You finally lay your burden down
   Close up your books, get outta ya seat
    Down the halls and into the street”
               From Chuck Berry’s 1957 hit, “School Days.
                       https://tinyurl.com/49hu3zhd

3. Travel

In my earliest years, my dislocated parents would drive from New York to Manitoba Canada or Nova Scotia, Canada to visit their parents. A long boring, non-stop slog of picnic lunches & cheap hotels in a cauldron of explosive family tensions in an old car left no travel memories: foreign or domestic. 

At 10 & 12, my father shipped me alone on the Canadian Nationa Railroad for summers at my mother’s parents' home on Manitoba, Canada’s plains to, as Grandma quipped, “… get me away from my mother for at least the summers.” 

I loved the railroad trip: Conductor’s conversations & attention, after-hours Boston Cream pie & milk in the dining car with chef & dining staff, and the 'clicking' of the rails during sleep. An adventure that led me to the most wonderful period of my early life. I've always loved train travel.

Most wonderful period of my early life.

Grandma was lovingly warm & huge … towering over diminutive, taciturn Scotch (Edinburg direct) grandpa. Grandma’s ginger snap cookies cooked on her giant cast-iron cook stove. Grandpa in his ubiquitous 3-piece wool suit with vest, smoking his deeply curved pipe with a shot of whisky every morning. 

And ..Uncle Bill, tall, slim Abe Lincoln-like; fisherman, hunter, local hockey legend and his lovely much younger girlfriend, soon-to-be wife, Ellie. Uncle Bill has always been my wonderful manly role model.

Wonderful boyhood summer adventures: tent sleeping with Uncle Bill’s dog, Pete, fishing, shooting rifles, big County Fair, boating & constantly in boyish trouble working in my grandfather’s store which even then, 70 years ago, was itself an antique small downtown grocery store now reassembled in the local Brandon, Manitoba museum.

I spent days on end roaming the streets of small Brandon, Manitoba on bike with Pete, Uncle Bill’s Springer Spaniel dog. Care-free days of solo adventure. 

Yet, despite my solo 3-day railroad trips to wonderful Grandma’s AND bus trips to Boy Scout summer camp, they spawned NO specific desire to travel for travel’s sake.… Perhaps, not a surprise really.

1. Does a child have an inherent desire for foreign travel?   Doubtful,

A child’s almost mental clean slate is frantically, with great wonder, trying to build its knowledge base, skills & experiences to match her growing awareness of the world she has been plopped into.

2. Can a child even grasp the concept of foreign travel? Certainly, based on knowledge & experiences they are exposed to

Perhaps in the same way 'tolerance' can be taught by erasing the significance of differences. EX: Americans eat hamburgers while Mexicans eat tacos; not good nor bad, just simply different.

3. Can parents facilitate travel desire? Perhaps

Exposing a child to travel-related media that compares/ displays foreign cultures with our own e.g.: National Geographic Magazine's, Curiosity Stream’s documentaries, History Channel etc.

Critical to expose, not force or indoctrinate, a child to everything letting them become naturally interested, or NOT. 

Public education’s forced memorization & destructive testing system destroys intellectual curiosity, imagination & creativity.

4. Why did my 10 year old's 3 day solo train ride across Canada  to Grandma’s NOT generate a desire to travel?

Too young to 'see' that far afield. It was a grand adventure in itself. Why would  I have wanted more?