"Name One New Thing You've Learned Today"

Mr. Skelansky (I don’t think I ever knew his first name) worked with my dad, Norton Melaver, in the grocery business in Savannah as what would be called now a combination CFO/CTO. Mr. Skelansky was something of a math genius. HIs son, whom I never met, even more so. He was banned from the casinos in Vegas in the late 70s for being an extremely talented card counter (though not talented enough to avoid detection).

Anyway, Mr. Skelansky, who was all of about 5’5” in height intimidated the hell out of me. Obviously not via his stature physically. But his mental acuity. Every time he saw me, which was fairly often in those days, he would ask me one question and one question only: “Martin, name one new thing you’ve learned today.” I would have whole conversations in my head in anticipation of our meetings. And all I really wanted to do at the time was to lose my thoughts in sports.

What a gift Mr. Skelansky gave me, though of course I never realized it at the time: to go through life thinking, ok, I am going to discover something today that I didn’t know yesterday. If I could pass one thing on to my kids, it would be this, the capacity for restless curiosity. Well, OK, not the only thing, but it’s pretty fucking high up on the list.

I guess that’s the legacy Mr. Skelansky left me, if my refrigerators are any indication, chock full of something or other I’m trying each day for the first time. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. I would, however, point out, that unlike intellectual criticality and curiosity, learning something new each day in our soul food question begs a very practical question of real estate: Where the fuck am I going to put it?