At 11 years old I walked between the enormous columns of the National Archives in Washington DC, strode by the original manuscripts of the Declaration Of Independence and the Constitution in their glass fronted cases and up to the desk where two very tall and distinguished looking gentlemen presided and asked simply, "Can you tell me what I want to know?"
"Yes, anything at all," they replied in unison. "What do you want to know?"
"...um...um...um..."
I stood there and fidgeted. Went away and thought about it some more. The day passed by and then another. Finally, a whole week was gone. I went back away with my family to our town in Alabama. Thought about it and continued to think about it. We moved up here to Maryland. The years drifted around our star and then became decades before transforming themselves into scores of years. I became a young man and then an old man and still the question resounded in my brain from the National Archives, repository of our nation's collected wisdom, "What do you want to know?" And now as a bent man in his 50s I can only reply, "Hell, I want it all." Anything less would not be worth it.
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