Christopher A. Wheeler

OK, maybe not all of them, but the one that Kate and I finished last week, Quest for Human Destiny, certainly did. Three weeks, three hours a day, five days a week. Lots of reading (Genesis 1-9, Jonah, Ecclesiastes from the Bible; The Old Man and the Sea; The Catcher in the Rye; Childhood’s End; The Epic of Gilgamesh; Enuma Elish) plus watching two movies (Tombstone and Blade Runner), all in three weeks. Two multiple choice exams, and an in-class essay about the movie Tombstone.

So on the final exam, I got a 49/50, and Kate and I exactly tied with 108 points for the class. We each got an A-. Three college credits in three weeks!!! Awesome!!!

So we watched the movie Big with the kids, you know, the one where the kid puts the quarter in the “Zoltar Speaks” machine. After the movie was over, I asked Michael and Audrey if they learned any lessons from the movie. Neither of them seemed to understand what I was asking, so I explained to them that we need to be careful what we wish for, because what we think we want, or what we think is best for us, isn’t always so. In the movie, Josh wanted to be big, but after being an adult for a while he realized that he wasn’t happy. He missed his family and friend, and missed being a kid.

After explaining all of this, Michael then shared with us the lesson he learned from the movie: Don’t stand too close to a machine that grants wishes.