Taking the Mystery Out of History
by Karen Williams - Seminole Chronicle - February 2006
I’ve been perusing my daughter’s high school world history book in order to refresh my memory. I want to intelligently discuss the Ottoman Empire, the Ming Dynasty, and the Bermuda Triangle with Emily, should the occasion arise.
So far the occasion has not arisen, as our conversations run along the lines of:
ME: The French Revolution had various precipitating factors, not least of which was the arrogance of the aristocracy. Can you cite other examples?
EMILY: Please be quiet. I can’t hear my music when you’re rattling on like that. [Door shuts loudly.]
ME: Oh.
But the real reason I study history is to impress my feller, Mark, when we watch TV’s perennial quiz show, “Jeopardy.”
When I seemingly pull an obscure answer out of thin air before the contestants do, Mark says suspiciously, “How the heck did you know that? Have you been getting inside info from Alex Trebeck again?”
Then I smile demurely and warble, “I guess I just have special genius DNA or something.”
Of course, when those pesky science categories come up, I make haste to leave the room to check on the pot roast, even if we’ve had dinner hours ago.
If I happen to guess the Final Jeopardy question correctly and the brainiac contestants get it wrong, Mark knows he must prepare to high-five me until his hands ache. And when he gives out, I run screaming through the house, high-fiving portraits and stuffed animals and scaring the heck out of passers-by.
Yes, I take my “Jeopardy” seriously but not enough to become an actual contestant. I’d surely suffer from mind-becomes-mush-under-pressure syndrome. It’s something that’s plagued me since first grade, when I was scheduled to demonstrate my reading skills at a school assembly. In my nervousness, I held my book upside down and squinted at the words, wondering why they looked strange. It evoked jeers and catcalls that scarred me emotionally, and I’ll probably never forgive that principal.
But I digress. After reading my daughter’s history book, it seems the story of civilization can be summed up in one word: wars.
Of course, that kind of brevity would make for a tiny textbook and not much fodder for essay questions, so the history-writers felt compelled to throw in some peripheral details.
To be fair, sometimes relative peace prevailed and wars gave way to mere crusades or inquisitions.
Some conflicts were dressed up with melodic names, such as the Peloponnesian War or the War of the Roses. Many were euphemistically called civil wars when the combatants weren’t, in fact, the least bit civil to each other. Then there were oddities like the Hundred Years War between England and France, which actually drug out even longer than that. And there was that slight misnomer for WW I: “the war to end all wars.”
Perhaps the only way conflict will cease is for the nations of the world to unite under a common threat from outer space. If little green Jell-O-type beings invade and threaten to whisk us all away for surgical experimentation, sparring countries will forget their gripes and the U.N. will become one big love-fest. But that’s about as likely as the following scenario:
EMILY: Mother dearest, please let’s discuss the advent of the Greek city-state whilst I clean my room and hang all my clothes on those plastic contraptions (I believe you call them…hangers?) in my closet.
ME: [Speechless.]
Copyright 2006, Karen Williams
