And also -- dude, I knew about King George III and the madness, but I didn't know he had porphyria! Did you all know that Mary Queen of Scots had porphyria? Wicked!

They hinted at that in The Madness of King George, which I loved. I know that Mary QoS had a lot of "hysterical" illnesses during her reign--but I didn't realize it was attributed to porphyria.

At least, that's what the Interbunny is telling me. Man, I know so much more about the Revolution now than I did last week! Although it may be stuff I knew before. Regardless.

You know what we need a name for? (Other than "chick who won't stop geeking out even though it's really annoying," which we generally just call "Emily.") The sort of fact which you'd really rather not know, like Lizzie Borden being acquitted, or that E.E. Cummings didn't lowercase his name, or that Patrick Henry may not have said, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

I love knowing the thing about EE though.

Did not know about Lizzie. Hmmph.

She probably did do it, but yeah.

What a freaking bizarre thing for a teacher to say.

It was strangely empowering in its backhanded way, in that it acknowledged that yes, damn it, I was right -- but the fundamental mistrust of authority led to decades of haircolor bills like you wouldn't believe.

(But that's a thing, see, because they don't tell you there are different number systems! They just keep showing you new rules, and you go, "But last year you said I couldn't do that!" and they say, "No, you can do that" like it never happened! Anyway, there are different number systems. Just so you know. And in the natural numbers, there are no negatives.)

Huh. Anyway, for a six-year-old, "You'll learn how to do that later" would be enough. Like in grad school, they still say sometimes, "That's beyond the scope of this course."

"Not allowed to know it yet"? What a freaking bizarre thing for a teacher to say.

Some of my teachers told me that, too.

Anyway, for a six-year-old, "You'll learn how to do that later" would be enough.

"You'll learn how to do that later" drove me nuts as a kid. I wanted to know it now, and I couldn't understand why people who knew the answer wouldn't tell it to me. (I was really not good at being a kid. I have distinct memories of being in first or second grade and getting very frustrated at my Hebrew school teacher because "She treats me like I'm a child.")

I would imagine the double-plus good teacher saying, "Let's talk about it at recess," or something, but what do I know about being a teacher?

I am also the kid who, when I had a one-page report to write on the topic of physics, had my father hand me The Tao of Physics.

Hil, me too. Being a kid was something I had to suffer through, but I sucked at it.

It's so weird -- all my teachers were always really encouraging of curiosity. Like, they might not want to go into it then, but they'd never tell me I wasn't allowed to know about it. Bee-zar.