Day Dreaming
History’s written about the bad stuff.
I found a textbook in the little area between my bed and the wall and it reminded me of all the bad stuff I was taught. The book reminded me about when the proud United States of America had to fight and kill its own people because some of its own people wanted to have the Black people around all the time to do all their work. That was some bad stuff.
I flipped further into this book of disasters to find a war of the world. The entire world had problems with each other that could only be solved by picking up those guns again. That was some bad stuff.
Somewhere around the time that that big city had its fire and that other big city had its earthquake the stock market crashed and everybody lost their money. That was bad stuff. But that bad stuff stopped when the next bad stuff began.
Later in that textbook I read that the world still was unhappy and all its countries decided to pick up their guns again. And six million dead Jews later, the Germans surrendered just in time to watch us Americans drop two little bombs with two very big explosions on the Japanese because they didn’t like us. Did they all not like us? Or was it just the military that didn’t like us? Or the folks who ran their military? But that didn’t matter. We thought they all didn’t like us over there so we blew them to bits. Looking back on that it was some pretty bad stuff.
The civil rights movement started a little bit after that, but in this book, there wasn’t too much about the progress. There were a lot of pictures though of those marches blown down with fire houses and angry white guys in their bed sheets. And I read a lot about how MLK was shot and JFK was shot and RFK was shot and X was shot. The whole alphabet was shot to pieces. Well that’s all that the textbook said. The book said that we weren’t through shooting people over here so we went to some places over near China and shot some of their people too. That was bad stuff.
Those countries where God spends most of his time thought that they didn’t get into the textbooks enough so they started some trouble of their own to be written about. And I did read about their trouble in the textbook that I found in the little area between my bed and the wall. Not too long after, they were keeping their trouble to themselves we Americans thought we needed to tap into the bad stuff going on on that holy land. So we grabbed our tanks and boats and went over there and got ourselves into their trouble. But all that we did didn’t stick long and now we’re two tall buildings shorter and we’re back there with our tanks and boats getting involved in more bad stuff.
I can’t deny that we have some bad stuff to look back on, but if we keep that bad stuff in our focus then what’s to stop us from thinking that all we ever did was bad. If we only teach from textbooks called the History of Bad Stuff, then all we’ll ever do is desensitize ourselves to bad stuff. Then it’s no longer bad stuff that we read about, then it’s pretty bad stuff, and soon after it’s not-so-bad stuff, and then it’s just a Tuesday in September. Pages and pages are written about bad stuff: wars, plagues, more wars, slaves, even more wars, poverty. Don’t let war, slaves, plagues and poverty be just another Tuesday. These things are bad. Acknowledge the bad stuff of history, most importantly fix it. But then when retelling, focus on how we fixed it. People always whine when the next war starts that history repeats itself. Of course, it repeats itself if we don’t focus on how we stopped it last time. The civil war wasn’t about fighting and slaves. It was about freeing and saving. The stock market crashed and it will again if we are as careless.
Martin Luther King wasn’t just a dead Black man in the list of men shot down in the late mid 20th century. King changed the way we think. King had his eye on the good stuff. He had dreams. I have dreams, too. That we might move passed all this bad stuff. And sing songs and write books and teach kids about the good stuff. In my dreams, history is written about the good stuff.
I found a textbook in the little area between my bed and the wall and it reminded me of all the bad stuff I was taught. The book reminded me about when the proud United States of America had to fight and kill its own people because some of its own people wanted to have the Black people around all the time to do all their work. That was some bad stuff.
I flipped further into this book of disasters to find a war of the world. The entire world had problems with each other that could only be solved by picking up those guns again. That was some bad stuff.
Somewhere around the time that that big city had its fire and that other big city had its earthquake the stock market crashed and everybody lost their money. That was bad stuff. But that bad stuff stopped when the next bad stuff began.
Later in that textbook I read that the world still was unhappy and all its countries decided to pick up their guns again. And six million dead Jews later, the Germans surrendered just in time to watch us Americans drop two little bombs with two very big explosions on the Japanese because they didn’t like us. Did they all not like us? Or was it just the military that didn’t like us? Or the folks who ran their military? But that didn’t matter. We thought they all didn’t like us over there so we blew them to bits. Looking back on that it was some pretty bad stuff.
The civil rights movement started a little bit after that, but in this book, there wasn’t too much about the progress. There were a lot of pictures though of those marches blown down with fire houses and angry white guys in their bed sheets. And I read a lot about how MLK was shot and JFK was shot and RFK was shot and X was shot. The whole alphabet was shot to pieces. Well that’s all that the textbook said. The book said that we weren’t through shooting people over here so we went to some places over near China and shot some of their people too. That was bad stuff.
Those countries where God spends most of his time thought that they didn’t get into the textbooks enough so they started some trouble of their own to be written about. And I did read about their trouble in the textbook that I found in the little area between my bed and the wall. Not too long after, they were keeping their trouble to themselves we Americans thought we needed to tap into the bad stuff going on on that holy land. So we grabbed our tanks and boats and went over there and got ourselves into their trouble. But all that we did didn’t stick long and now we’re two tall buildings shorter and we’re back there with our tanks and boats getting involved in more bad stuff.
I can’t deny that we have some bad stuff to look back on, but if we keep that bad stuff in our focus then what’s to stop us from thinking that all we ever did was bad. If we only teach from textbooks called the History of Bad Stuff, then all we’ll ever do is desensitize ourselves to bad stuff. Then it’s no longer bad stuff that we read about, then it’s pretty bad stuff, and soon after it’s not-so-bad stuff, and then it’s just a Tuesday in September. Pages and pages are written about bad stuff: wars, plagues, more wars, slaves, even more wars, poverty. Don’t let war, slaves, plagues and poverty be just another Tuesday. These things are bad. Acknowledge the bad stuff of history, most importantly fix it. But then when retelling, focus on how we fixed it. People always whine when the next war starts that history repeats itself. Of course, it repeats itself if we don’t focus on how we stopped it last time. The civil war wasn’t about fighting and slaves. It was about freeing and saving. The stock market crashed and it will again if we are as careless.
Martin Luther King wasn’t just a dead Black man in the list of men shot down in the late mid 20th century. King changed the way we think. King had his eye on the good stuff. He had dreams. I have dreams, too. That we might move passed all this bad stuff. And sing songs and write books and teach kids about the good stuff. In my dreams, history is written about the good stuff.
posted by Gary Crane at 9:05 PM
2 comments
