Door Key Meow

I was asked what time it was, and I gave a very good reading.

Somewhere past the middle, I was too young for numbers.

But I could see, where the long hand was pointing.

I got laughed at a little in a kind and gentle way.

Maybe the long hand pointed at 50, and I was saying 40.

My pride was hurt a bit, but at least I figured out how people read clocks.

I spent the rest of my baby days, going through drawers.

Learning about odd pieces of wire, bolts, and my favorite pointy shiny nails.

One time I was even given a chair and a hammer, where I could practice pounding nails into.

It was my sweet little chair, but you never say never to swinging a hammer.

Yup, I eventually had to open a watch, to see what it is inside.

I got busted by a teacher, the watch was fine.

And to this day, I have good appreciation for a fine movement.

Eventually, I made a mess big enough, for people to start locking everything.

And that is when I begun lock picking, if you can call it that.

I didn’t know about the inside of a padlock, but the padlock manufacturers apparently didn’t know about me.

It takes less than 5 minutes of poking at a padlock with a piece of wire from my broad collection, to open it.

And you can improve the process, by becoming a key collector.

As the people in charge of outside doors, at a local neighborhood found out.

I was maybe 9, and addicted to collecting door keys.

I am sure the loop I created, still exists somewhere.

But right before the word spread, my neighbour, pushed the c64 cartridge in.

When I was assembling the computer bits, I was very gentle.

But you really have to slide the cartdige, onto the PCB.

And when I saw the blue commodore screen, I wasn’t disappointing that it wasn’t a game.

While I didn’t know what a cursor was, or what the RUNSTOP key really did.

I knew I had my window, to infinite complexity.

I failed building a parking structure, int the balcony’s planter.

I failed making fancy things out of plastic bricks, and the technical version was too expensive.

Now I had my Commodore 64, and the quest to put a pixel on the screen had begun.

I walked very far, across traintracks, to buy Simon’s BASIC programming book.

I didn’t like the idea 100%, because I wanted to program the raw commodore.

But, messing with Simon’s BASIC, was fine for now.

I made pretty cool robots out of letters, and moved to America.

And got my first PC a 286, followed by a proper Pentium 90.

I had to learn English, and get rid of High School.

And all the weird unstable crap, that comes along with it.

And finally, I sad down to Visual Basic 6, had all the proper books.

The disrespect at my workplaces, was worse than in High School.

There was nothing to be found there, so I set off on my Socratic journeys.

To return a gadfly, with hopes of building a real school.

Which I know today as Artificial Intelligence driven, self paced, self directed, individualized instruction.

Where the first and foremost lesson, is learning programming.

In order to attack poverty, in a way that gives students a fighting chance.

A lot behind fixing education, is in changing what we see as education.

It is not a passing grade on a test, but a passage though persona curiosities.

Only what we return to in our invention, will ever truly matter.

Standardized education threatens students away from personal curiosities.

They will not excel in anything, that they don't personally care bout.

And in order for them to care about greater subjects, they must first traverse their smaller curiosities.

There is a million ways to write a program, but only one best way.

And that is where I do my learning, and where I keep myself sharp.

By building, inventing, re-building and reinventing little programs.

While pondering the world, and what it means to grow up.

And how we should all grow all the way, till we each stand as a great being.

I am a watchmaker, a rule breaker.