A NEW SEQUEL

Meet Joey

A 14-year-old boy with immense curiosity

Meet Joey. Joey is 14 years old and of immense curiosity. He is not a great student in the conventional sense. He doesn’t do well on tests and is slow to solve many of the math problems teachers give him.

But when he’s building a stage for his friend Hannah or answering pet questions for his friend Alfred who has become a recent dog owner, Joey shines.

You see, Joey knows a lot about a lot and is always asking himself questions which he then solves in a few ways:

• He googles his questions and then reads the many posts to see what he can learn.
• He asks his dad to explain things because his dad is a very clear, no-nonsense mechanical engineer who understands how gadgets work.
• He experiments on his own. Sometimes he fails, but he always learns something.

Now Joey has many friends because he is always helping them solve everyday problems. When his friend’s brake wasn’t working on her bike, she went straight to Joey, who went into his backpack, pulled out his wrench, pliers, and cutters, and fixed the brakes — all during recess. This allowed his friend to bike home, as was the plan, because no one was available to pick her up.

Joey has two particularly close friends who have asked him if he would write a book that asks and answers all the questions he routinely solves. One friend, Alfred, is very, very smart and helps Joey with his classroom assignments when Joey needs help. Alfred has explained,

“Joey, you are what teachers call an ‘autodidact.’ You teach yourself, and you do a great job of it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with your approach. By the way, you also teach us.”

Joey’s other friend is Hannah, for whom he built the stage. Hannah is special in the creative energy she brings to her friends’ lives. She also brings lots and lots of words because she loves to write. She is so committed to the written word that she is happy to help others learn to write, and this includes Joey. Hannah has suggested,

Joey, you are so unique. We need to let others share in your talents and curiosity. If you agree, Alfred and I will help you go down the path of writing a book. We can call it ‘Ask Joey.’

Now, this was both interesting and confusing to Joey. Something that always seemed a weakness — his inability to do well in school — was now being called “a strength,” and his friends have asked him to begin compiling material that would be the basis for a book.

Joey is considering this idea because he really does have so many questions to answer, and this could help him organize his thoughts. Just yesterday, he wondered:

• How does hypnosis work? And how is it used? And can people fake being hypnotized?
• When his mom complained that her bread dough was not “behaving” because of the weather, he wondered what exactly that meant. Could humidity and temperature affect the bread, and does bread have a mind of its own?

Just these two questions led Joey to think and say “Yes” to his friends.

And so dear readers, “Ask Joey” will be born, and you can revel in the mind of what his dear friend Alfred calls an “autodidact.” Joey is even thinking of setting up a question box for his friends, and I can do that for Medium readers as well.

Stay tuned.