I have to admit, if you asked any of my friends from high school if there is any trait of mine that annoys them, it would be my tendency to ask far too many questions. Questions that do not have an obvious answer. Ironically, asking what established this tendency is one of these questions. Of course, when my mother asked me about it about a year ago, my brain noticed the nature of the question and latched onto it. For many moons, I pondered this question, philosophically analyzing each and every minutiae and how they all connect in a nexus, a web of cognitive processes that culminate in the very foundation of my entire personality. Needless to say, my brain tends to be rather schmaltzy, maudlin, melodramatic, etc. about this form of introspection. While the answer to the aforementioned question is not simple, it at least resolved the dissonance from not knowing such a prevalent aspect of my personality.

Superficially, the home I was raised in was not intellectually stimulating in the slightest. For a child as curious as I, this fact was absolutely unacceptable. Most parents would have responded to this by purchasing colorful and expensive toys, but mine were not able to provide such a luxury. While being raised in a low-income family did restrict many of the opportunities presented to me in my childhood, it could never hinder my desire to know the world around me.

Although I may be making an unfair extrapolation, I will hazard a guess that my stubborn curiosity stems from the severe case of ADHD I harbor today. If this extrapolation does turn out to be fair, then I would say it is the most rational explanation.

I say this because the way my parents describe many of my juvenile behaviors have many parallels with the disorder. For example, I would constantly be moving from place to place—in spite of my apparent laziness—always ready to let my metaphorical motor take over; any homework I had would be put off as I preferred to read six pages of a book then color half a picture then eat five servings of goldfish crackers in one sitting; I frequently lost track of the world around me, daydreaming about a smorgasbord of various topics that lacked even tangential similarity; all while becoming rather agitated whenever someone snapped me back into focus.

It was only a matter of time before I got myself into trouble. By trouble, however, I mean with Lady Luck, as I would be prone to falling from the top bunk or smacking my head into various cupboards. Whenever I was not injured by misfortune, it would be from shorting out the electricity from sticking metal into a power outlet. Twice.

This need to explore and determine the nature of everything I set my sights on was one of the traits of my childhood that I would consider to be intrinsic, only brought about by a lack of explicit stimuli in the form of countless toys. In hindsight, I attribute this constant boredom as the primary cause of my hyperactivity.

There is, however, one topic in particular that grabbed my attention and held it: music. Whenever Sunday came along, I would grow ecstatic while watching the worship team play. Although this may have stemmed from the fact that my father led the team, I still found this music to be a source of comfort, even when he was not on stage.

I recall that he never let me touch his guitar. Considering my tendency of breaking several picture frames and lamps and pieces of furniture, this makes sense in hindsight. As a child, though, reverse psychology never let me forget how much I wanted to play it. The first time I did strum the guitar, however, happened in a way that furthered his reason for not letting me touch it.

It all began with a craving for a glass of orange juice. Being as incompetent as four-year-olds are, I went to ask someone to pour it for me. At the time, my father was outside taking our dog for a walk. Since I had no clue where he could be, I went to find my mother. I guessed that she was in her room at the time, so I walked in. She was not there, but before I had the chance to realize this, I had tripped over nothing and landed face first into a bedstand.

Yet I could not cry. On the way down, something had grabbed my attention: the sound of the guitar. As I was falling, I had accidentally run my fingers across the strings, producing a noise that I was not well acquainted with. So, naturally, I look around me. What I did not hear was the guitar being knocked off its stand and falling onto the floor. I panicked—at the time I hated even the concept of breaking rules—and struggled to mount the guitar back on its stand. Luckily, my father had not come back from the walk. No one saw a thing.

I was relieved. Soon, however, the curiosity took over. I had not seen how the guitar made the noises I heard. I only saw six strings of what appeared to be coiled metal, decreasing in thickness from left to right. The strings were centered over a hole in a beautifully constructed glossy wooden body that perfectly reflected the overhead lights. So I did the unthinkable: I took the pick from the neck of the guitar and played.

I was mesmerized.

I played the same way, again and again, watching the strings as I strummed. While I was unaware that knocking over the guitar had bumped some of the strings out of tune, I was quite entertained, albeit I had no idea what was going on. I hear the door to the house close, put the pick back, and pretended nothing ever happened. Fortunately, besides needing to be tuned, no damage had been done to the guitar.

The next day, I arrived at school early. Being in the afternoon half of the Kindergarten class at the time, I walk in as most of the students in the morning half leave. I enter the door and hear a familiar sound of a guitar coming from the music room. The room was only two doors down, so I could hear the music teacher playing quite clearly.

As I entered the room, the teacher did not notice. I must have stood there for at least five minutes, enthralled by what I was hearing. My teacher was seamlessly harmonizing chord after chord in rapid succession, never missing a single beat. I had never seen anything like it before. The only person I had heard play the guitar was my father—whom I thought was the greatest musician in history—so hearing another person play with such exquisite finesse. After a while, he looked up, seeing me standing in the doorway. He was rather surprised—the afternoon session was to start in an hour—but told me to come in.

“How does that work?” I asked him.

“What, the guitar?” he answered. “Maybe it’s best if I show you.” We walked over to a nearby classroom and borrowed a magnifying lens from the teacher. We walk back into his classroom.

“Hold this by the strings of the guitar. Pay close attention as I play”. I did as he asked. I held the lens up a few inches away from the guitar and watched in unwavering anticipation.

I could not pull my gaze away. What began as me just staring at the strings and realizing just how different each string looked soon evolved into a mental comparison between the vibrations of each note. I connected how higher pitches would vibrate much more rapidly than lower ones. I finally figured out that chords work by playing multiple notes at the same time. I gazed upon the scene in front of me for what seemed like an eternity as my brain dilated my sense of time to take every piece of data in.

I do not remember what song my music teacher played. I do, however, know that this began a passion for creating different sounds. Every object around me—from a “guitar” made from a tissue box and rubber bands or drums out of large bowls and saran wrap—became both my clay and my muse. My youthful mind began an inquisition to discover as many unique sounds as possible. I would dream and make and play in a cycle that was repeated countless times. Each cycle would end with bringing my creation to my music teacher and relishing in his delight.

Over the years, this process became my default. As time went on I would be presented with many a variable or question that my brain would not quite understand. Within nanoseconds, my conscious mind would anchor on to this obfuscation and begin to do whatever possible to illuminate the unknown. And each success was nothing short of euphoric. I am unsure if this state comes from the figurative journey or destination. Regardless of the origin of this feeling, I do know that it has been the inspiration for countless an experiment, and the very reason that I persevere, no matter the roadblocks.

If my tendency to over-inflate my explanations has not yet been proven, just being in one conversation or debate will be the final piece of evidence. Again, if you were to ask old friends, they would tell you that I may be rather long-winded, but as long as there is an argument to be made, my triteness becomes rather endearing, like the way a grandfather would break (partially) from his senility while narrating to his grandchildren the goings-on of his glory days.