Repeat after me, "NINETTTTTY-EIGHT..."
There I was, seated casually in front of the tele for my usual lunch date with Oprah at 1.05PM (I take my dates with her very seriously these days since it's her farewell season) and was blown away by the closing segment of her Greatest Lessons show, basically featuring stuffs she learned in the past 25 years.
The segment featured a man named George Dawson (now deceased), who worked his entire life as a manual labourer, whether its covering potholes as a city worker or milking cows as a dairy farmer. Having laboured and toiled since a very young age, and perhaps attributed to his African-American ancestry, Dawson was denied the chance at education.
After a healthy push from a retired teacher, Carl Henry, Dawson decided to learn how to read and write at 98 years of age! Dawson went on to not only be able to read and write, but has since published a bestselling autobiography, "Life Is So Good".
And I'm not done yet, he was awarded honourary degrees from two universities, along with a school named exclusively after him, George Dawson Middle School.
Yet, what amazed me most was not so much his achievements, rather, what The Economist aptly pointed out, his ability to remain "clear-minded" despite his age. When you're at a certain age, and especially when you're 98, having tasted the asam garam kehidupan, you ought to have grown more or less spiteful or cynical towards things. But Dawson remained naive enough to think that he could still do all what he wanted to.
Now where's that Mandarin textbook?
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