Personal Narrative: Santa Claus
At six years old, I believed in magic. I believed in Atlantis. I even believed in the Tooth Fairy. I would wake up in the middle of the night convinced that I would finally catch the Tooth Fairy. However, all I would ever find was a dollar hidden under my pillow. Out of all the things I believed in, I believed in Santa Claus the most. However, on one fateful Christmas Eve, my beliefs were shattered. As my father and I were driving home from Pizza Hut, I kept telling him to drive faster so I could get home in time to see Santa Claus. He then told me five words that completely changed my life: Santa Claus is not real. I was shocked. Everything that I believed in seemed to come crashing down. What else was not true? I felt like I took the red pill and awoke from The Matrix. This one event transformed me from a naive, gullible kid to a skeptic. I lost my sense of magic.
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As other first graders absorbed and praised the words of their teachers, I questioned them. I became that kid that talked too much and asked too many questions. I did not understand how everyone accepted all the facts that they were given. Students were told that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180 degrees and they just accepted it. No one asked what evidence there is to support this fact or even considered the possibility it could be incorrect. They just accepted it. I believe just accepting things without even thinking about them is perhaps one of the worst things that can be done in the pursuit of knowledge. If I said that I saw a zombie, everyone would question it. However, if I instead said that penguins live in Antarctica, everyone would accept it. Even though the vast majority of them never have been to Antarctica to see penguins but rather have been told that this is the case so it must be
As other first graders absorbed and praised the words of their teachers, I questioned them. I became that kid that talked too much and asked too many questions. I did not understand how everyone accepted all the facts that they were given. Students were told that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180 degrees and they just accepted it. No one asked what evidence there is to support this fact or even considered the possibility it could be incorrect. They just accepted it. I believe just accepting things without even thinking about them is perhaps one of the worst things that can be done in the pursuit of knowledge. If I said that I saw a zombie, everyone would question it. However, if I instead said that penguins live in Antarctica, everyone would accept it. Even though the vast majority of them never have been to Antarctica to see penguins but rather have been told that this is the case so it must be