When I was a child, Tiny Tim and his ukulele were pretty cool, so I thought. So, "When I Was A Child", was inspired musically by Tiny Tim. The rest of the story about picking flowers and rescuing animals in the woods is based on my own childhood at the farm, where I grew up.
I totally hated school. I wanted to draw and play, but school was full of bullies and strangers who acted like beasts (except the girls, who I had crushes on).
But I noticed one thing. When we were learning about planets and the universe, there wasn't any life on any of the (at the time) 9 planets in the solar system. Only Earth had life. And that made me wonder why everyone thought school learning was smart. Life was right in front of us, everywhere. School learning wasn't life learning.
In school, you learn the lessons and then you get tested. In real life, you get tested, and then you learn the lesson. Real life is the better teacher. School was full of fake teachers, who taught us fake knowledge, about fake subjects (like history). Nobody taught us the real history of our country, or about the money, or trade, or commerce that started it, either.
It turned out that for all of the teachers I had, the smartest one was a biologist, Mr. Dominic Lambert, of Delsea Regional High School. He was the only teacher I actually liked, because he had life experience in the field during his time at the Navy. He had a refrigeration business on the side during the summer. And that's how he made money.
So much for school. And mathematics.