Do you remember a magical moment from your childhood?

When you are an adult, especially if you are a parent or grandparent, you witness and can create many such magical moments for children. We often associate such moments with gifts, such as a toy piano for Christmas or a bicycle for a birthday, but the magical moments which seemingly last forever are those which trigger a powerful emotional response, create a sense of awe and amazement, or expand the boundaries of your imagination.

One of my magical moments as a child was when I read a copy of the National Geographic magazine for the very first time. It was in a doctor’s or dentist’s waiting room, I can’t recall exactly which, where there were untidy stacks of new, not so new, and long outdated magazines. Things haven’t changed much in waiting rooms since my childhood.

Now remember, this was the age before TV and the internet, so my knowledge of the outside world when I was a child was gleaned from the printed word. I don’t know what prompted me to pick up a copy of the National Geographic magazine that day because the cover designer obviously had not won any prizes for his/her creativity. If you have seen early issues of the publication you will know what I mean.

For nearly three quarters of a century, the cover design of the National Geographic magazine comprised of an oak leaf drawing, set against a yellow border, framing the title of the journal and the table of contents. That was it. Although the magazine was first published in September, 1888, the first photo appeared only in 1889. It wasn’t until July, 1959 that the first photo found its way to the cover in honour of Alaska’s entry into the United States. As the occasion would demand, the first photograph on the cover was of the newly augmented 49-star American flag in brilliant colour.

Looking back, it was a minor miracle that I got past the magazine’s intimidating cover that day, but it was a decision I never regretted because it opened up a whole new world for me. The stories of real life explorers and their adventures, and the beautiful pictures of amazing animals and places kept me riveted and my mother had to literally rip the magazine out of my hands when the nurse finally called my name.

I didn’t receive a lot of pocket money in those days so a subscription was out of the question. Besides, as a child, I don’t think I fully grasped the concept of a magazine subscription. Instead, every trip to the library or the doctor developed into an opportunity to launch an aggressive hunt to track down an unread issue of the magazine. This eventually developed into a full blown reading habit which saw me breezing through 12 library books a week, courtesy of my older and younger brothers’ library borrowing cards which I had commandeered. But that is another story.

The upshot is, despite the passing of the years, I must confess that I am still fascinated by the National Geographic’s unique content as exemplified by its February, 2016 issue’s story on eyes.

Last Christmas, in a moment of nostalgia, I gifted a subscription to the National Geographic Magazine to my grand nephew, Julian, in the hope that he might extract as much pleasure as I did when I was his age. We shall have to wait and see if he does, however, because children today have so many rich, diverse and inventive sources of information about the world.

In my heart of hearts, I am hoping he finds one of his magical moments.