I’ve known Andy since he was a teenager, and Cathy has known his mother, Sally, since before Andy was a gleam in anyone’s eye. I’ve always liked him, and it’s not always easy for me to like teenage boys. But Andy has been an earnest young man for as long as I’ve known him — a firm and fixed shape to his face and firm and fixed ideas in his mind. At fourteen he had a quiet intellectual confidence that would have been a credit to a man of thirty.
When he was a senior in high school, he read something I had written and convinced his English teacher to invite me in to speak to the class. I gave them ninety minutes on notational systems. That might sound dull, but in fact it is the naked essence of human social interaction. We started with learning to multiply in Ancient Rome, took a grand Mediterranean cruise of cognate terms, touched upon Shakespeare and Plautus, and brought it all back home to real life in modern America. I lecture on real estate all the time, but I think that day was the most fun I’ve ever had talking to a class.
“This is the life of the mind in action, as it is actually lived. It’s not some desiccated notion trapped in a dusty book, it is an eager pursuit of new knowledge by reference to what is already known. The more you know, the more you are able to discover.” I don’t claim to have made a lasting impact on those kids, but for ninety minutes, at least, they understood that there are reasons for learning apart from passing a test or getting a job or staying out of trouble with your parents.
When Andy graduated from high school, he elected to join the Army. Sally had money set aside for his college education, but Andy reasoned that if he served in the military, Uncle Sam could pay for college and he could then use the money Sally had saved as investment capital. It was peacetime when he enlisted, so the ratio of reward Read more
