For instance, when I ask myself the question, "what is love?" the first thing I picture is a six year old boy. It' summer and he's rolling around on newly mowed grass, being jumped all over and nipped at by a litter of ten beagle puppies. He's laughing. And they're yipping. And they're loving him. And he's loving them back. All eleven of them. All in love. All without words. All without help.

This is the first thing I picture when I ask myself, "what is love."

It always thoroughly satisfies me as to what it feels like to be in love.

And how about the opposite picture then. Hate. What is my first picture of "hate?"

The first thing I picture when I ask myself, "what is hate?" is me walking past a house and being told by some older boy not to go near "those people." The mother was white. The father was African American. And the baby boy was so beautiful and innocent.

I remember going up to the door one day just to say hello. Only once. After that, I got called "nigger lover" by the other kids for a while. It frightened me, I guess, because I didn't have a picture for what they were feeling let alone calling me. I had, by then, figured out though that for some reason, people who hated others could easily hate me.

And after that, many people did, although I still have no picture of what makes people hate a seven year old boy for saying hello to a baby. Only Layer 2 explanations, like pure stupidity and total ignorance. And Layer 4 revenge feelings best left out of the present text.

Over the years, when I've thought about that day, I've asked myself, many times, what made that boy so full of hate? And for a family whom he had never even met, no less. I never did find out. Which in effect means I never did get a picture of what could turn a boy like him into such a patently hateful person.

So what about my picture of "students?" What do I picture first when I ask myself what a student is?

My answer? My father. Sitting, late at night, in an almost completely dark room. Lights out to save money, no doubt. The room is very dark, in fact. It's winter and all the lights are off. Except for the one floor lamp to the right of his chair. The one with the orange lamp shade. Which meant it was throwing an orangey light all over him. And his book. And his never to be completely clean again auto mechanic's work clothes.

Even now, I can picture myself standing there in the shadows, watching silently. His head is bent forward, and his eyes are as close to the page as he can humanly get.

He would get so still, at times, I thought he might have fallen asleep. At other times, I worried that something had happened to him. Something bad. Like a sickness or something worse.

Nothing ever did. He was simply so deep in thought that he looked like he was dead. In truth, he was just revisiting, again and again, the details of some kind of a technical drawing, some kind of a diagram of machinery or an engine.

Although I had never been formally told, I knew to never disturb him on these kinds of nights. Not even to say goodnight to him, which is what I always remember wanting to do on those nights. Not that he would have heard me call to him while he was in that state anyway.

So what exactly was he so engrossed in? My belief? He was doing thought experiments. Imaginary visual exercises in which he would dissemble and reassemble either some kind of automotive machinery, like a transmission or such, or some sort of broken appliance, like a lawn mower or a washing machine.

Years later, I remember feeling proud of him when, as a man, I learned that Einstein taught himself by the very same method as my father did. Imagine. My father had something very significant in common with Einstein. They both taught themselves by doing thought experiments. They both studied things in life by imagining how they worked.

Is this the essence of being a student; doing thought experiments?

A part of me thinks it is.

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