Be Curious

Baby wynston

“Be curious, not judgmental”  – Ted Lasso

When I was 8 years old, we moved into a neighborhood that had a house with a pony in the yard. Naturally, the girl who lived there became my favorite playmate. The pony was named Comanche and he carried the two of us on many glorious adventures. One such adventure was spawned by a curiosity about mysteries of the boy’s bathroom.

One day, my 3rd grade self was told that the boys bathroom contained these things called urinals. Like, toilets that hung on the wall! I was rather fascinated by the thought of this so I told my pony owning friend, Michelle, that we had to find out if this were true.

So, the next day after school, Michelle and I rode Comanche to the school and placed him on the back side directly under the boy’s bathroom window. I stood up on the saddle and was able to reach the window well enough to shinny it open. I then scrambled up the wall and through the window with Michelle coming right after.

WE WERE AMAZED.

Right there in front of us, ON THE WALL, was a line of white shiny urinals. At that point, Michelle wanted to leave but I was determined to figure out how to flush the thing because I wanted to see it.

As I was contemplating the flushing thing, the bathroom door started to open. It was the school janitor and we were about to get busted! Without hesitation, we flew into a stall (yes, they had those too) and leapt up onto the toilet. There we stood in absolute silence while the janitor mopped and whistled a tune. We held our breath as the mop snuck under the door of the stall and thankfully, he never opened the door.

After an eternity, he finally finished his job and left. In a millisecond after the door closed behind him, we jumped off the toilet, bolted out of the stall, and leapt through the window. We both flew through the air and in the best Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid style landed on the sleeping Comanche.

Michelle grabbed the reins. I grabbed Michelle. And, both of us kicked that pony into a dead run away from the school. We laughed all the way home.

Did my curiosity lead to an earth-shattering discovery?  Well, not really. And yet, here I am 56 years later and the memory still makes me smile. How many times in a lifetime are you able to John Wayne yourself out of a window onto a horse and gallop away? Truly, often it is the journey toward whatever it is you seek that is the real treasure.

I can still hear our laughter and the fleeing hooves of that little paint pony. Be curious.