Charmanders, Chirality, and Childhood: Why I Would Love to be Nine Again

Scattered across the backyard, my siblings and I scoured below rocks, uprooted daffodils, and searched behind trees for Pokemon potentially hidden out in the tall grass. Examining the base of one such tree, I discovered a hole burrowed in the wood. Excitedly, I waved my younger brother over to check out the find. Even with his expertise, we were unable to coax any of the prized creatures out of the aperture, and a few minutes later, we had abandoned the sapling to continue our grand exploration.

Many years later when I consider the memory, I shake my head at the naivety of my younger self. I consider with amusement how I must have sounded to my parents as I explained over dinner the significance of the find and shared my eagerness in checking out the location once more in the coming days.

Sometimes, I wonder why my parents didn’t shatter my illusions right then and there. I imagine how easily they could have explained to me in a cool voice that Pokemon and Pokeballs and Ash Ketchum simply didn’t exist. Rather, sharing a knowing smile between themselves, they allowed us to scurry off to our Gameboys where we would spend the better part of the evening exploring our imaginations vigorously through our conversations and our digital adventures.

As a writer, I can now appreciate my parents’ wisdom in refusing to disrupt these childish illusions and rather allowing time to peel them away. The same boy who as a child could easily be whisked off to London when reading “Oliver Twist,” and then Portland, Oregon an hour later with “Ramona the Pest,” now struggles to ignite his imagination in the ways he once so easily could. I’ve come to believe this alteration can be credited in a part to a degree of faith that I’ve lost in the world around me as I’ve grown.

As a child, I could believe that the world of Nemo and Buzz Lightyear was really no different from our own. Sheltered, I had no idea of the world that existed beyond my doorstep, one ravaged by inequality and conflicts that my puerile mind could not even begin to understand. I could believe then that a little boy like me could rise up and prevail against any challenge as long as I believed in myself like the Sunday morning cartoons promised.

As I went from watching Cartoon Network to CNN, I learned of the gospels of disenfranchisement that ruled cities near and far from me. These realities began to dispel the innocence that had cloaked me. I began to see that the heroes of my childhood—Santa Claus, Spongebob, and Samurai Jack—were merely a fiction after all.

Now, it would be easy to say that this loss of innocence was for the best, an inevitable part of maturation. I was merely buckling up my trousers and embracing my place in adult life. However, in growing up, we lose something important as well. We begin to forget the spark that had once ignited those childhood adventures. The one that allowed us to marvel at the beauty in common things and to take joy in the most mundane aspects of the world we occupy.

When I took organic chemistry, I learned about Louis Pasteur, who discovered chirality, one of the most fundamental concepts of the subject, at 24. For some reason, his story stuck with me and led me to ponder this question: Why was it that, so often, younger scientists, musicians, politicians and artists dreamed up or catalyzed innovations in their respective communities, sometimes with little to no life experience?

After some thought, I concluded perhaps it was due to the dearth of experience itself. Maybe, as they had not yet fully grown up, they weren’t yet imprisoned by their knowledge, jaded by their rationality, and still nurtured the childish spark that might lead them to question the world we stubbornly insist we know so well.

I’m turning nineteen soon and my birthday wish is to recapture the mindset I had when I was nine. Perhaps not the one who looked for charmanders in the backyard grass, but certainly the one who saw President Barack Obama climbing the White House stairs in 2009 and put down my gameboy to inform my grandmother that one day that would be me.

—Jude T. Okonkwo ’21 is an Integrative Biology concentrator in Currier House.