Normally my Webster’s New World Dictionary, circa 1984, best serves my needs by propping open my bedroom window. Rarely opened, its worn red binding and missing pages have become the reference reject of my house, phased out long ago by its Internet great-grandchild, dictionary.com. But when my laziness gets the best of me, and I can’t seem to walk downstairs to the computer, I find myself with it open in my lap, combing through its antiquated pages in search of some random word that is too strange for me to skip over. Such was the case yesterday, as I sat down, highlighter in one hand, David Quammen’s The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, picking up where I left off. Two paragraphs in, and my dictionary is already open: page 185, “bugaboo.”
Up until this point, I had only heard the word used as a term of endearment (not in any regard to me, thankfully), and really couldn’t equate it to Charles Darwin, however hot an item he was in his heyday. Out came the dictionary with its definition: “a bug bear.” Seeing as that had achieved nothing, downstairs I went, coming back up to my room with a much better understanding of Quammen’s sentiments. It turns out that a bugaboo can be many things: a baby stroller brand, or my favorite, “an imaginary monster used to frighten children,” or the more probable, “something that causes fear or worry; bugbear; bogy.”
Having established that, I continued reading, decidedly ignorant of the meanings of the rest of the “big words” included in the text that were never on my spelling list in elementary school.
But through my reading (25 pages worth, so far) the passage that made me scramble for my dictionary had stuck with me: “Both as hero and as bugaboo…” (page 11), a statement which mirrors my own introductions to Darwin. And while this whole topic brings me back to my ninth grade science teacher with pens in her hair and husband in France, dead set on drilling evolution into our little heads, it also opens a new scope of intellectual stimulation.
While I’ve never been one to jump up and down at the mention of anything scientific, I am actually excited to read this book and frankly, am looking forward to getting involved in all the hustle and bustle that is surrounding it. Sure, to some people Darwin is a “hero”, and to others, a “bugaboo,” but, there’s where I see the fun in this whole project. Call me a nerd (believe me, you won’t be the first), but I’m the type of person who looks forward to this type of thing; maybe it’s because I’m really competitive, undeniably stubborn, and a little proud, maybe it’s for the thrill of the chase, after all, I’m one for a challenge.
But even more, this assignment looks like it will go further than Darwin’s theories, teaching us about interacting in an intellectual community. Serving perhaps as a microcosm for what I would like to believe would be our entire college experience, I hope to be fully engage myself in this project. Though I have been forewarned by some upperclassmen that it’s not worth the time and effort, I’d rather find out for myself than let such a valuable opportunity pass by.