Thomas Edison

Hello, my name is Thomas Edison.   My friends call me Tom.   I, like most people of this early America, did not grow up with money.   I have amassed great wealth, but I worked for it.   Rarely did I hold less than two or three jobs.   However, this was not merely to gain prosperity, but was also because I was too interested in process and progress to simply sit still.   I have no formal education.   I know what I know because I wanted to know it.
    I was born in Milan, Ohio in 1847.   I was the youngest of 7 children.   My siblings and peers often made fun of my unusually large forehead.   No one suspected that my gargantuan noggin held any purpose other than to give people something to focus on with cruel intention.   No one thought me to be smart, except in the sense that I frustrated my teachers with my persistent questioning.   I was accused by my teachers of being obnoxious and selfish.   I would quickly drain their energies and patience. In the future society I would have probably been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hypertension Disorder.   Thank goodness Ritalin had not been created.
    Due to my inability to adapt to the scholastic system, and my mother being convinced that I was particularly intelligent, my mother and father thought it best to take me out of school and educate me at home.   While my mother taught me the “3 R’s” and the Bible, my father was determined to educate me in the classics.   Although he was not a man of great means, he did pay me 10 cents per classic I read.   My parents did their best to sate my great thirst for knowledge.   Unfortunately, my thirst soon surpassed their ability to answer.   I was encouraged to put to use the public library and its resources.   I was 11 years old.   At age 12 I realized that the great Isaac Newton’s use of classical aristocratic terms was not necessary and somewhat snobbish, leaving the average student unable to understand what he was reading.   I did, however, appreciate most of his teachings.
    Although I...