My dad likes to point out several key moments in my life where (in hindsight) it seems very clear to him that I was destined to go into philosophy.
My favourite one is when I was about four or five years old. I tell this one to my students a lot. I thought I might as well post about it.
We had just watched Little Orphan Annie, and I didn’t know what an orphan was. I asked my Dad. He told me that an orphan was someone who didn’t have parents to take care of them.
That didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t have parents. I asked my dad why someone wouldn’t have parents to take care of them. He listed off several reasons, but one that stuck in my mind was his claim that parents sometimes die.
I didn’t know what death was, and my dad suddenly realized that he was about to have the death discussion with his first child. My dad got the idea across to me as something like permanent sleep. He did a pretty good job of explaining, because when he was finished I knew enough to know that it was a bad thing.
I wanted to figure out how I could avoid this bad thing. So, first I asked if everyone died. I was shocked to hear my Dad say, “Yes.” Then I asked (I suppose not quite understanding the universal quantifier), “Am I going to die?”
My dad paused, grimaced, tried to figure out the best, most delicate way to word this. I suppose he gave up because eventually he said something like, “Well. Yeah. Someday.”
I lost it and ran upstairs in a frenzy. I was in my room for a bit balling my eyes out (and I think I may have knocked some stuff over). I was furious and terrified.
My dad followed me and finally calmed me down. Trying to catch my breath, I stuttered out – “I don’t what to die on Sunday”
Yep. I thought my dad had told me I was going to die on Sunday.
Whenever my dad recalls that story he usually ends it with something like – “You were different after that day.”
Of course, lots of kids have a freak out episode when they learn about death. What was peculiar about my episode was that for those few minutes in my room I really thought I had, at most, 7 days of life left.
So, anyway, that’s how Little Orphan Annie turned me into a philosopher.
It’s amazing the affect mistaking an ‘n’ for an ‘m’ can make, huh?