My Path to My Passion of Politics, Part I

Politics has indirectly been my passion since I was in elementary school (I'll get to why 'indirectly' in a while.) It started when I was in elementary school when my 3rd grade teacher Mr. Kuba would tell us about all the visits he would take around the world; in particular his visits to Australia. He would go on and on about the different cultures and people and sights he’d see. My curiosity of how the world operated outside of Danbury was one that had me going to the library and looking at different pictures of the world. A few years later I remember being in Ms. Fulmer’s 5th grade social studies class and learning less about the world and more about American history. We were assigned projects on the civil war and slavery and I remember asking myself as a child “How could people let this happen?” We went to the Scott Fanton museum down the street from my elementary school once and I remember the museum representatives showing us the musket guns they’d use during the American revolution and the civil war and I remember asking myself again “Why would people fight and kill each other?”At such a young age, I was always perplexed by the reasons groups of people would bring themselves to killing others.

My constant questioning of why this and why that and why them was never fulfilled. If a teacher went over a war, I’d ask them why it happened. When they told me their answer, I’d ask what led to that. When they told me their answer, I’d ask them who started the war. When they told me that, I’d ask what led people to kill other people. When they told me that, I’d ask them more why’s and how’s and who’s than they knew how to answer. The truth is I was a pesky but inquisitive little boy. I was that kid who sat up front and asked the most questions everyday. I was never the best student when it came to grades or keeping myself focused on work, but when it came to asking the tough questions and wanting to learn, no one in any of my social studies or history classes ever came close. No answer was ever sufficient for me, because knowledge was my compensation for my lack of A’s and B’s. I remember one instance when one of my peers got into what was called the summit program in Rogers Park Middle School and gloated to me about how he was smarter than me because he got in and I didn’t. I told him “Fuck Summit, I’m still smarter than you.” Needless to say, I had a dirty mouth at a young age and maybe I didn’t take too well to being called stupid by some rich kid from King St., but the truth is I knew I was in fact smarter than him. Some kids are just better at regurgitating numbers and dates and they’re rewarded as being told they're more intelligent for it, but I saw the importance of putting rationale and meaning behind those numbers. While some of my peers were taught algebraic formulas and rewarded as being "smarter" for knowing them, I remember telling my friends those numbers wouldn’t matter when we got older. I was the kid who was always telling the teachers “I get it and I can do it, but HOW is this going to help me and my career when I'm an adult?” I was scolded every time for asking that question. Mrs. Miville yelled at me, Ms. Fulmer yelled at me, Mr. Allen yelled at me; they all got so damn mad when I asked them that very question. I’m a grown man at 24 years old and I don’t care what anyone says; at 11 and 12 and 13 years old, I was right. All but one teacher yelled at me: Mr. Scalzo. Again, I'll get to him later.

I’m a man now and I carry the same stubbornness with me today. Knowledge is less about the answers you can give and more about the questions you can ask. I didn’t need test scores or academic programs or teacher favoritism to know I was the best student in a lot of my classes. I didn’t get the A’s and B’s, but I asked the questions and got the answers. I didn’t know how to solve a quadratic formula for the life of me, but I could talk about American taxes and the importance of homeownership and world history and discrimination in America and the Vietnam war and civics and voting. I could talk about things I needed to know as an adult, at 13 years old..

Then September 11, 2001 came around… My mind, my passion and my thoughts would never be the same after that day.

Part I,
David.