My first really good one came at the tender, squishy age of 14 months or so. Back in those days, my dad had a gigantic, rattly old pickup truck, smothered in some execrable pinkish-tan color that only a color-blind painter could love, and which intervening years of rough use had supplanted with a great acreage of rust. Bumbling down the highway, strapped into my car seat next to Dad on a random errand, I was babbling on in the manner that little ones tend to do to excess. For lack of any sort of available toys or distractions to inspire a moment's quiet, Dad reached into the glove box and pulled out the first item that came to hand, that being the owner's manual for the truck, and thrust it into my pudgy, grasping fingers. Blessed shut-the-fuck-uppery settled over the cab, and Dad got to drive along in peace. For about two minutes.
"Dad?" I asked.
"Yes, son?" sighed Dad.
"Where's our dack?" I asked, matter-of-factly.
I should probably add that at this point in my career as a baby, I had somehow or another picked up a pretty savvy grasp of English, rather over and above that which would be expected from one of the diaper-clad set at my age. I had managed my first word - juice - at the pediatrician-stymieing age of four months, and proceeded to come to terms with more and more complicated language patterns as time went by. My parents chalked it up to the hours I spent raptly watching Sesame Street and other exciting children's educational fare from the confines of my brightly-colored baby kennel they had deployed in the living room. They considered it an amusing parlor trick, good for a laugh at the expense of unsuspecting dinner guests, but nothing to be especially concerned about or excited over. Besides, it was cute - certain words and letters got mangled up, not the least of which was a long-standing habit of swapping my Js for Ds; this was adorable for them, and interminable for me when forced to listen to old home movies 20 years later.
"Where's our *what*, son?" Dad responded on autopilot, as you do when you're talking to, or in the usual case, at, a baby human.
"The dack, so we can change the tire."
Dad gave a slow, horror-movie glance over to my car seat, where I had the manual gripped sturdily in my grubby claw. The first somewhat surprising thing was that it was open, and not upside down or being gnawed on like some papery dog treat. The second somewhat surprising thing was the chapter to which I had managed to open it. The page said:
CHAPTER 4 - CHANGING A TIRE.
Step 1: Remove the jack from the storage compartment behind the seat.
This wasn't the first time poor old Dad didn't have much of an idea how to respond to the behavior of his increasingly strange, round-headed son, so he settled on running the truck off the side of the road. After we bounced to a somewhat safe stop, he held the manual in front of me and pointed to another line with a big, work-roughened finger. I read Step 2, and then Step 3, and so on, getting tripped up on a few words my baby-sized vocal hardware would not consent to render, but generally getting through the most of the page.
I understand that when he got home, he was whiter than usual, demonstrating to Mom the latest trick his apparently possessed son could pull off. And it turned out to be a bit more than a trick. Mom and Dad gave me the kiddie books which they had dutifully read to me at night (and many they hadn't gotten to yet), bits of newspapers, cereal boxes, and anything they could find with words affixed. Posessed or not, little one-year-old Johnny Bean had taught hisself how to read. My folks had quite the vocal conversation that night. I don't know exactly how it went, but I can take a pretty solid guess at the overall content:
"Oh shit," I imagine they said, "he can read. Now what?"
Now what, indeed.
Even twenty-five or so years after that day in the truck, I still think "now what" is the hardest question ever.
I'm still trying to figure out "now what", now.
