We’re going to start way way back; before even my own memories.  Something my mother recalls from back when I was about four years old, and my mother took me to my first day of Sunday school, Jewish religious school:

      In the car I turn to my mother, face glowing with pride, and say, “Today I begin to be a Jewish man!”

      “You’re only four years old!”  my mother thinks silently.  She smiles and watches me enter the building.

      A few hours later the phone rings.  It’s my Sunday school teacher.  “There’s a problem with David,” she says.  Can my mother come in to speak about it?  Of course.

      The teacher explains to my mother that I ask too many questions.  In all her years as a teacher my mother has never heard of such a thing as a student who asks too many questions.

      The Sunday school teacher explains that David asked whether or not there was such a thing as Old Hebrew (seeing as how there is old and modern English.)  Not knowing the answer, the teacher said that Hebrew is a very old language, but David was not satisfied with her reply.  He pelted her continually with questions she, the simple daughter of a rabbi without any real education training, could not answer.

      My reputation of “problem child” at my synagogue is begun, and the system takes care of the rest:  I am sent to the office, where I cannot learn with the rest of the students.  Returning to classes too ignorant to understand the subjects of discussion – let alone participate – I act out in frustration.  I am sent back to the office to be further robbed of opportunities to learn.

      Some years down the road, I return from yet another office visit, and peer into the classroom.  I am delighted to see that the class is studying the basics of Hebrew letters – a subject I actually know a little about.  I put my hand to the doorknob, but don’t open it.  I withdraw my hand like it’s been shocked.  This isn’t my classroom.  That isn’t my class.  These kids are two years below me, and I would be just barely able to keep up with them.