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.

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.

Aww.

(Third-grade book report on Moby Dick, here. I actually made it through. I did not come up with a damned thing sensible to say about it. But, learned things about blubber flensing and tribal tattoos that have served me ever since.)

My cousin read Moby Dick for fun, and liked it, albeit in high school. I have never been able to wrap my brain around that, or the book either for that matter. It blows my mind that it was popular. Faulkner does that for me too.

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

Knew these facts. And I love it. I geek out with useless knowledge all the time.

So how did E. E. Cummings start being written e.e. cummings? I completely didn't know this (or that Lizzie Borden was acquitted. I love buffistas!).

What's porphyria? I looked it up at dictionary.com, but they just said abnormalities in the blood, etc.

So how did E. E. Cummings start being written e.e. cummings? I completely didn't know this

Because he broke rules with his poetry in punctuation and spelling, so people started putting his name in without the capitals, assuming that he would have done so. Not so.

So how did E. E. Cummings start being written e.e. cummings?

In his own writing, he never was -- his use of lower case for things like the beginnings of sentences and the pronoun "I" (or rather "i", I guess you could say) was something he was incredibly picky about in his poetry (and his normal-looking uppercase signature), but sloppy editing has classed him as the all-lower-case guy for at least 50 years.

more here: [link]