Around age 5. I remember this event as if it happened yesterday. I was watching the election returns with my parents in the 1956 General Election, and asked why Eisenhower was smiling about his victory, when per what my parents told me, it was a done deal before the election that he would trounce Stevenson (no I don't remember my parents using the exact word "trounce"). Why smile about something you already knew was going to happen, was what was in my five year old brain. You only smile for unexpected pleasant surprises, or at least good outcomes that are in substantial doubt, was my thinking. Yeah, by age five I had already decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. I really enjoyed arguing with my mother about everything - herself a very litigious and opinionated and political lady.
