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Truly, one of the hardest parts of it for me was to let go of my conviction of Einstein's infallibility. I mean, that he might be fallible in more than just endearingly quirky little abstract ways. I was not even conditioned to love him when I first started loving him, but was quite appallingly encouraged in this spiritual affinity I'd started feeling when I was something like three or maybe four. I have said "seven" for decades, but that isn't right. I'd started saying that in the lightning of needing to try to mitigate the outrageousness of it.
See, I found the Einstein book on the sidewalk of the street where I lived until I was four, before I'd started school. I'd opened it directly onto the page where they brought up E=mc2 and had my little cosmic epiphany right out there on the street. Seriously. It was as though I were suddenly made stoned, left the walking around world where my mostly-wolf dog was dragging me around by my leash, and shot me into the unified field. I made the mistake of asking my mother about it. She wanted to know where I'd gotten the book. She made me go back out and put it where I'd found it so the person who'd lost it could find it again.
It was probably Gary, our covertly brainy neighbor. Everyone thought he was a dunce... until his senior year in high school when some maniac put him in a chemistry class. I don't think Gary ever believed the hype about his stupidity. He was a pretty serene guy. He was a major, major, major canary enthusiast... off in his own world. Anyway, after scaring the snot out of everybody with his "sudden" mathematical and scientific wizardry, he went on to get some outrageous number of advanced degrees in just about everything; make several trips to Antarctica; and become a professor at MIT. This is why I think that was Gary's book. He lived on the other side of the street, but he did not confine himself to it... and it didn't take long for that sacred book to disappear from the sidewalk after I'd returned it to where I'd found it.
It actually has to be very close to on or before my fourth birthday because we moved to the house with all the redwoods in the yard, on a street with no sidewalk, in my fourth year. That was back when my dad was building houses and we were moving into them if we hadn't sold them before they were finished. So it's kind of easy to date certain moments like this according to where I was at the time. This makes it almost certain I was three, and nobody ever taught me how to read. I just could read. I might've been born able to read for all I know. I just know that I could read all the signs in the cartoons, caught all the references in them. I remember my dad teaching me to add, subtract and multiply in a few minutes at the kitchen table at the house we were in right before I started kindergarten. So I have to stop dating all my memories about learning to "seven". You can handle it.
I still love Einstein... I just know he wasn't as infallible as they wanted us to believe.
