Oh of all the things to know

I believe that I still have a lot to learn. All the time I think I’m smart enough to be on my own and to take care of myself, but then I look at school, life, and other people and I realize that I still need education. It is election year now and we hear nothing on TV and radio but news about the campaign, but I know absolutely nothing about politics. I hear the two candidates talk about what they would do as president and I have no idea what they’re saying.

My dad is in charge of paying bills at home and I never realized how many things we have to pay for and how much they cost. We have to pay for things like electricity, cable, insurance, health care, don’t forget food and education. All those things cost up to thousands of dollars, sometimes I’m shocked at the prices and the fact that we can afford it. I don’t know how to balance a checkbook or what it means to do that. When the time comes that I have start doing that, I’m going to need a lot of help. There is a saying that checks bounce, what does that mean? Do you throw a check at a wall and it jumps back at you?

Every week in school we go over a new unit of vocabulary words. Most of the time, we review words that I have never heard anyone say in my entire life. However with some other words, I have heard before but I have never known the definition until now. On some rare occasions, we see words that I know. These are definitely not everyday words.

Every year my family takes lots of road trips, mainly when we go to St. Louis for Thanksgiving. It is a very long drive, 4 hours to be exact. My parents have been there more than I have and they know the way there by heart, we’ve been going there my whole life and I still don’t know the way. I am not good with road travel. I hear people giving directions saying all the streets, highways, exits, and other places but I don’t have a clue where those are. If someone says, “this place is on 115th street” then I say, “I don’t know where that is” then the person says, “it is very close to 114th street” then I say “well where’s that?”

Even if you are smarter than everyone you have ever met, that doesn’t mean you know everything. You will ALWAYS have more to learn. People even learn new things after they get a masters degree. We learn at least one new thing every day and there is still tons more to come. I have more to learn, do you?