Introducing a Peculiar Little Boy from Deep in the Past

I spent Christmas Eve looking through old photos with my parents. I think it's what elderly people enjoy doing, though my father prefers to look through the daily newspaper and read the obituaries, to see who he has outlived.  I believe it makes him feel a tiny bit better about the diminishing sands in his hourglass, knowing that his quota of time has lasted longer than most.

We found this picture of me as a peculiar six-year-old boy who loved reading about the U.S. Presidents.  I received cardboard cutouts of every President as a gift and insisted they all be taped to my bedroom wall. At that point in my life, I could name all the Presidents in chronological order, list their political parties, and recite the years of their births and their deaths. God, I was weird. I have absolutely no idea why I was so intensely interested by these historical men. I remember being a novelty act when we went to picnics and other gatherings as others marveled at my bizarre talent. Studying the Presidents' lives filled me with a passion and enthusiasm, I haven't felt...probably since then. Why does such zeal disappear?

Maybe it's because, I remember entering first grade somewhat mystified that my classmates not only did not share my interest, but really knew nothing at all about the Presidents except that George Washington cut down a cherry tree once. And as I realized my talent alienated me from my peers, I sought out sports and other topics to help me integrate with others in an effort to be the same as them and and not so different. And, in time, you become another person. Perhaps you become another person, each day when you wake up, but you don't realize it until you look at old photos with your elderly parents.

I now look at that little boy in this picture and wonder where he has gone. He seems so far removed from my current existence that he might as well be someone from before I was born. Perhaps that what the years do as they pass by. They distort the passage of time and turn everything before last year into a surreal blur.