The problem with dating in junior high is people think everyone is waiting and watching for what they’ll do next. It’s a movie, and the couple is with other friends, but it’s never about watching the movie. It’s someone else’s home, but the parents are mysteriously not present, and the feeling of eyes still glaring is unforgivable. Should the man reach for a hand? Embrace the first step of many in their quest for something they hardly know? Arm around the shoulder then, if they have the guts. The man (child) decides, and throws the arm, but only because a friend of a friend said that she has a crush on him and that he should make some move. This is the first step in the realization of miscommunication. At school the next day, the girl blatantly says that she has no interest in him, but would like to remain friends, or something like that. The boy has a hard time hearing those last words as his fingers feel like water hoses are pushing from inside. Sweat from his armpits are racing down his chest, and his only hope for survival is to be as cordial and understanding as possible. If he doesn’t, the one thing that could happen is him tackling her and shouting while deflecting pathetic arm grabs, “Your friend is a liar!”
The true response comes from the boy that night after school. When a mother enters the room and asks, “How did the date go?” Moms know these things because the biological timeline of their child is never forgotten, especially from a mother who cares. In any case, it’s all it took for the boy to crumple like stacks of newspaper and sprawl out on the shaggy gray carpet and huff and puff. The tragedy that he’ll never blow the house down is never realized in the wheezing, and he keeps crying. All the mother can hear are things like, “It’s not fair” and “I’m never getting married.” Fortunately for the boy, the mother is some form of magician, and can soothe those ruffled feathers. All it takes is soaking up his tears in her t-shirt. All it takes is quiet whispers of reassurance that someday there will be someone who will be just the one for the boy. The boy sleeps like it never happened.
And in the end this story is lighter than others. It turns out the girl telling the boy early on about her feelings was the best thing a woman can do. And she learned it in junior high. But then we can conclude that there must have been worst stories, terrible ones. They weren’t all bad, but they weren’t all bad because there are traces of kinship in the human imagination and in literature that are so nurturing as to bring us to tears, and then there are our real mothers. And the ones in fantasy don’t nearly come close to the ones that have lived to tell their own tales.
In those heated days that never seemed to end, I hated those damn shoulder pads. Think about the most constricting clothing to ever be presented to a man, combine them all and then tell him it’s over one hundred degrees outside, and then tell him he must battle to the death against more of the same. In those heated days all the parents take pictures and barely sit in the fold out chairs. In those heated days, they still must’ve yelled at the officials and argued about the concession stand prices. But one thing is for sure: those parents saw their children raise lightning and throw down hell on those fields. Even if it was some form of absurdity in which parents are screaming “No son, dribble to the other side” or “Get the ball”, they were still titans. At the end of that hot day on the grass as they picked away at ants crawling up their cleats, they must’ve looked like the prize winner of the world. “My son is the future” they must have all agreed as they rubbed their children’s sweaty heads, and then bitter sweetly rubbed their hands on their jeans. And in those days was my mother. I was never a sport God. I never made great plays, or ran for touchdowns, or led in heroic speeches, but my mother did not care. I would eat snow cones and squint tightly as the ice froze my front teeth; my big gapped front teeth. And I drank it up, I drank it all up. All my mother wanted to do was watch. While I was throwing natural curves, all she wanted to do was witness me, like I was some new breed that no one else saw.
Picture a red suburban, the older kind, before SUV’s ruined everything. Picture the paint chipping off at the top, not because it was old, but because it literally could not take the intensity by which my mother and I listened to classic rock. Picture musicals that seem trivial now, but were witnessed five out of five times by a mother who drank it up, not by performing, but by just being there.
“Mom do you have any aspirin?”
“What?”
It’s the night of pop show, my senior year performance. I learned that aspirin helps the voice. I had no idea if that was true, but in those circumstances you’ll try anything.
“Do you have a headache?” she asked.
“No mom, I just need it. Ms. James said it helped the singing.”
We are backstage, and Mom gives me a look that says, “You’ll be fine” as she turns and heads back around to take her place in the audience.
We’re singing For The Longest Time, and it’s my turn at the solo. The crowd loves us, and tilt their heads right and left as we charm anyone and everyone, because that’s what seniors do I suppose. I get to the high notes, and when I do the most horrible crack occurs. My voice shatters in volume and in hindsight friends watch videos of it and laugh for hours, blowing it off. I know this because it’s mine, and while people always say they forget those things, I never believe them. Because how could they ever forget? It’s the worst thing in choral history. Watching the video footage, my other choral comrades literally could not snap together because they were physically disabled at the wretched sound. It sounded like a walrus couldn’t make it out of the swimming pool and just “arfs” his fat slob body on the side of the pool.
I head backstage and everyone looks at me for a reaction. By this stage of my life they still do not know how I react to these things. They obviously didn’t know the story of placing the arm around the girl. While I did nothing at school, the aftershock and reality always hits hours later, when I’m safe, alone. Always act cordially, because people will respect you for it, or something. But mother knows. She is there and when I walk up to her, she’s already got the aspirin in her left and a bottle of water in the right. She smiles a little, and I’m horribly stoic.
Singing Beyond the Sea later in that concert was the most important moment in my life because it taught me two things: one is to always get back up when you fall and the crowd will love you for it. The second is there will never ever be music that is so fun to sing as the jazz I sing now. It was young, it was confident, and it the beginning of something. Beyond the Sea was the story of a man who was a boy. He wept when he realized that he killed any hope of a future with one woman, but somehow on the other side there would be someone. Beyond the Sea, in a sense, was my mother.
I sang in college, but stopped. I played sports until high school, then stopped. I dated until graduation, then stopped. All my loves, all my desires, are becoming less and less relevant. But only to a certain degree, because no matter how many less and less people hear or see what I have to offer, there will always be one person who knows damn well what I can do, and loves me all the more even when I don’t do them. In her mind, I’m always throwing lightning, climbing some mountain that seems to be a mere geographic hindrance.
What I hate most about the Giving Tree, is the fact that this tree gets literally torn apart and all that’s left is a stump. And when the child returns as an old man, the stump is glad to have one last usefulness. It’s the most horrific moment in which the old man almost expects there to be someway out of the moment by using the tree, almost as if he expects it. And the tree gives in. It’s a horrible tale of lack of responsibility. And also it’s self hatred. Because I picture myself as this boy, and I picture my parents as the tree. “Don’t worry,” they say, “We want to do this.” Well that’s great and all but it doesn’t really fit well with me. Because where was I when they got dumped on dates and where was I when they cracked their voices or lost a game?
So this is all I’ve got. This is my building of a paper boat in a hurricane. This is me swinging at 98 mile per hour fast balls. This is me singing Beyond the Sea while falling 15 stories. Because it’s all I’ve got now, and I don’t ever want to keep writing without attempting to say happy mother’s day because my mother gave me everything I have today. And even at 21, I’m still just a boy who is still crying on shaggy carpet, and my mother is always there to dry them in a t-shirt.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
Three Meetings
My creative writing teacher’s office lies on the fourth floor of the language building. As you exit the stairway and look right, there’s a selection of free books that are on shelves next to the entrance. The books are all unheard of titles representing incomprehensible topics. Most are bogus non-fiction, clinging to what looks like their final home had they not been free. Having visited my teacher several times I can tell you those books are there to stay. To me, it’s some foreshadowing of something horrendous I don’t care to name.
“Hey Colton.” my teacher said as I come in for the final time that semester. “Have a seat.”
I come in and sit down, with ideas in my mind that are not quite fleshed out. “I’m not going to lie, after working on this story for this long I think it’s total crap. I think it’s goofy that this character makes telescopes in such a modern time. I feel the characters I’ve made are so cliché, fake, or something. I don’t know. It’s like I can’t get in touch with anything, and the project feels so impossible to surmount.”
My creative writing teacher instantly smiles and says, “That’s normal.”
We both laugh, and he continues. “It is perfectly fine to feel these things. I sent in a story to be published, and I felt there were errors in it. That’s just the way it works. To be honest, I would be more scared if you felt fine about the story. I would be skeptical if you told me you were comfortable with anything in your story. A writer should always be critical of his own work; not to be pessimistic, but to understand what the flaws are and not respond negatively to outside criticism.”
There are few moments in life that lead to the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment, and while I don’t feel that with the short story, I feel that in his office. There’s wisdom in older people, and sometimes I feel they are there for us. While that’s not necessarily true, it’s almost as if he’s begging for listeners. And I’ve always loved to listen. While his room seems very briefly decorated, his very demeanor spurs on excitement, and passion. There are no pictures, no memorable artifacts. There lies only a desk, essential English books, and his computer. A writer until the end, he is confident living in his own world, but also pulling from others in a focused way. What does it mean to surround oneself in total isolation? In these days, it has become nearly impossible. But for my creative writing teacher it has been realized enough as an early 20th century man.
A week later, I will see a box in front of his door with writing that says, “PLACE SHORT STORIES HERE.” I pull out my 15 page short story and look at it, then look down. It feels so far away, and I look at my revision and how unclean it looks. I know that paper cannot have leprosy, but as I hold it I hear it scream, “outcast, unclean.” Out of anger, fright, and disgust, I drop the paper into the bin. It plops on top of the rest. It is a bittersweet feeling: finishing the class, but realizing that my story is not even closed to being finished.
“I called this meeting because I wanted to talk to you about your post-reflection paper in your teaching presentation. I also wanted to talk about your overall grade in the class…I feel like you do not really understand the theories we’ve discussed in class.”
That’s probably correct.
“You’re right. I don’t understand the theories.”
“The theories are important. Wouldn’t you agree?”
No.
“Yes, absolutely.”
She looks at me and starts talking about the details of each theory. My observation forms of other students in their presentations have been anything but fantastic. Honestly I don’t give a damn. But of course that isn’t the problem. I now realize that I am so resilient in doing things that I do not want to do that it will ruin me if I continue. But I can’t stop. As I looked at my education teacher I realized that despite my opinion of the crap theories that were before me, I became a mirror with which to reflect everything she wants to hear. I suppose in the end that’s all people want us to be is just a mirror for their own view of life.
“You did not fail.” she said as her mask of compassion was placed and she was trying out the look on me. “You could not fail this part. This is a learning experience.”
“I know. But it’s not up to you. My self-esteem has always been…not what it should be. It’s not you fault. That’s just the way I feel.” She looks at me like a failed experiment, but I look at her like she’s making all the difference in the world. I’m trying I really am. She puts on the statistics mask.
“Looking at your grades, you’ll probably walk out with a C in this class. But your teaching philosophy needs to be…well…you’d better show me these theories in there. This paper is as close to a cumulative final as I can get. Think about it like that.”
As I leave, I’m imploding from the inside. It’s a beautiful day, and inside all hell is breaking loose. I wanted to throw myself back into that dressing room and throw her masks all over the room and scream, “Jesus woman, I don’t care.” But I kept walking. We all keep walking I guess. Editing my teaching philosophy paper was for me like taking a well sculpted woman and cutting off the arms. Metaphors aside. I hate butchering what I feel good about. I hate doing things that I don’t want to do. This either makes me a child, a politician, or a man. No one has really told me which one yet.
I’m sitting in front of a man at Chase Bank, and he tells me he wants to review my contact information. His desk is made of straight laced wonder. It contains no pictures, no love letters, no valentine’s day projects from daughters. It contains no interesting pieces of art. It is purely work, and while it looks nice for an Ayn Rand novel, it has me worried more about him than him of me and my contact information. The truth is I want to grab his suit, pull him forward and make him grip with his child soft hands and say, “good God man, don’t you know what you’re missing?” But I can’t. Instead I hold my sunglasses because I have nothing else to hold on to. I’m running away in my mind, but in the physical I’m saying “yes sir” and “no sir.” To be honest I didn’t know why he called the meeting. I suppose it was to prove that I actually existed.
“Well we appreciate you coming down here,” he said, “And you can email me if you have any questions.”
I thought about emailing the man. I thought about saying something like this: “Hello sir. I had one quick thing to ask. I have this problem with my short story, but I think you solved it. You see my main character is a man not tied to anything, kind of like you. He has no real physical ties, but he makes telescopes for a living. He works hard and makes good money, like you, but I’m not so sure about the ending. He’s told to build this telescope for this woman who has emotional weight to her custom telescope request. So I wanted to ask you: ‘Would you build a telescope for a woman who seeks to get over her husband by watching the stars?’ Again I appreciate your time.”
And I’m laughing at the thought of walking in to the same educational teacher’s classroom for summer school. I scoff at authority, and I know it could destroy me. I love the idea, of countering every argument, refuting every theory, and simply slapping her teaching back in her face. While it seems to be a moment of conquest for me, the reality is I will walk in holding a giant mirror in front of me while I text my friends how boring the class is.
And in the fall I will literally cry with joy as I see my creative writing teaching again, this time for non-fiction. He’ll tell me that we think our life is crap and not worth writing and that’s okay, because in the end it’s that feeling that encourages better writing.
“Hey Colton.” my teacher said as I come in for the final time that semester. “Have a seat.”
I come in and sit down, with ideas in my mind that are not quite fleshed out. “I’m not going to lie, after working on this story for this long I think it’s total crap. I think it’s goofy that this character makes telescopes in such a modern time. I feel the characters I’ve made are so cliché, fake, or something. I don’t know. It’s like I can’t get in touch with anything, and the project feels so impossible to surmount.”
My creative writing teacher instantly smiles and says, “That’s normal.”
We both laugh, and he continues. “It is perfectly fine to feel these things. I sent in a story to be published, and I felt there were errors in it. That’s just the way it works. To be honest, I would be more scared if you felt fine about the story. I would be skeptical if you told me you were comfortable with anything in your story. A writer should always be critical of his own work; not to be pessimistic, but to understand what the flaws are and not respond negatively to outside criticism.”
There are few moments in life that lead to the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment, and while I don’t feel that with the short story, I feel that in his office. There’s wisdom in older people, and sometimes I feel they are there for us. While that’s not necessarily true, it’s almost as if he’s begging for listeners. And I’ve always loved to listen. While his room seems very briefly decorated, his very demeanor spurs on excitement, and passion. There are no pictures, no memorable artifacts. There lies only a desk, essential English books, and his computer. A writer until the end, he is confident living in his own world, but also pulling from others in a focused way. What does it mean to surround oneself in total isolation? In these days, it has become nearly impossible. But for my creative writing teacher it has been realized enough as an early 20th century man.
A week later, I will see a box in front of his door with writing that says, “PLACE SHORT STORIES HERE.” I pull out my 15 page short story and look at it, then look down. It feels so far away, and I look at my revision and how unclean it looks. I know that paper cannot have leprosy, but as I hold it I hear it scream, “outcast, unclean.” Out of anger, fright, and disgust, I drop the paper into the bin. It plops on top of the rest. It is a bittersweet feeling: finishing the class, but realizing that my story is not even closed to being finished.
“I called this meeting because I wanted to talk to you about your post-reflection paper in your teaching presentation. I also wanted to talk about your overall grade in the class…I feel like you do not really understand the theories we’ve discussed in class.”
That’s probably correct.
“You’re right. I don’t understand the theories.”
“The theories are important. Wouldn’t you agree?”
No.
“Yes, absolutely.”
She looks at me and starts talking about the details of each theory. My observation forms of other students in their presentations have been anything but fantastic. Honestly I don’t give a damn. But of course that isn’t the problem. I now realize that I am so resilient in doing things that I do not want to do that it will ruin me if I continue. But I can’t stop. As I looked at my education teacher I realized that despite my opinion of the crap theories that were before me, I became a mirror with which to reflect everything she wants to hear. I suppose in the end that’s all people want us to be is just a mirror for their own view of life.
“You did not fail.” she said as her mask of compassion was placed and she was trying out the look on me. “You could not fail this part. This is a learning experience.”
“I know. But it’s not up to you. My self-esteem has always been…not what it should be. It’s not you fault. That’s just the way I feel.” She looks at me like a failed experiment, but I look at her like she’s making all the difference in the world. I’m trying I really am. She puts on the statistics mask.
“Looking at your grades, you’ll probably walk out with a C in this class. But your teaching philosophy needs to be…well…you’d better show me these theories in there. This paper is as close to a cumulative final as I can get. Think about it like that.”
As I leave, I’m imploding from the inside. It’s a beautiful day, and inside all hell is breaking loose. I wanted to throw myself back into that dressing room and throw her masks all over the room and scream, “Jesus woman, I don’t care.” But I kept walking. We all keep walking I guess. Editing my teaching philosophy paper was for me like taking a well sculpted woman and cutting off the arms. Metaphors aside. I hate butchering what I feel good about. I hate doing things that I don’t want to do. This either makes me a child, a politician, or a man. No one has really told me which one yet.
I’m sitting in front of a man at Chase Bank, and he tells me he wants to review my contact information. His desk is made of straight laced wonder. It contains no pictures, no love letters, no valentine’s day projects from daughters. It contains no interesting pieces of art. It is purely work, and while it looks nice for an Ayn Rand novel, it has me worried more about him than him of me and my contact information. The truth is I want to grab his suit, pull him forward and make him grip with his child soft hands and say, “good God man, don’t you know what you’re missing?” But I can’t. Instead I hold my sunglasses because I have nothing else to hold on to. I’m running away in my mind, but in the physical I’m saying “yes sir” and “no sir.” To be honest I didn’t know why he called the meeting. I suppose it was to prove that I actually existed.
“Well we appreciate you coming down here,” he said, “And you can email me if you have any questions.”
I thought about emailing the man. I thought about saying something like this: “Hello sir. I had one quick thing to ask. I have this problem with my short story, but I think you solved it. You see my main character is a man not tied to anything, kind of like you. He has no real physical ties, but he makes telescopes for a living. He works hard and makes good money, like you, but I’m not so sure about the ending. He’s told to build this telescope for this woman who has emotional weight to her custom telescope request. So I wanted to ask you: ‘Would you build a telescope for a woman who seeks to get over her husband by watching the stars?’ Again I appreciate your time.”
And I’m laughing at the thought of walking in to the same educational teacher’s classroom for summer school. I scoff at authority, and I know it could destroy me. I love the idea, of countering every argument, refuting every theory, and simply slapping her teaching back in her face. While it seems to be a moment of conquest for me, the reality is I will walk in holding a giant mirror in front of me while I text my friends how boring the class is.
And in the fall I will literally cry with joy as I see my creative writing teaching again, this time for non-fiction. He’ll tell me that we think our life is crap and not worth writing and that’s okay, because in the end it’s that feeling that encourages better writing.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Teaching Philosophy
Assignment for May 3rd in which I had two to three pages to explain my teaching philosophy. While I don't think this is what my teacher wants or expects, I am very happy with it.
I threw fire, at least that’s what they told me. In those days of unmitigated youth the only conclusion that can be drawn from baseball and football was that they were superheroes. The kind of superheroes that stood for something, and what it was it could not be named. It’s the feeling when my father stood up and celebrated the winning pitch on television. It was watching the movie “Sandlot” and understanding that part of growing up sometimes was running for my life. To a child, it was the feeling of complete power, and complete freedom. And for that short time as a child or even a teen, we learn we slowly lose that simplistic paradise. In hindsight some conceive that childhood freedom to be ill used. For me, I was a left-handed pitcher.
They told me I threw fire. While this one kid threw faster but put bruises on their chests with wild forced exchanges, and the others were still trying to understand a curve ball, the great part about left-handed throwers is that we have a genetic advantage. When a left-handed pitcher throws a baseball, as long as his body presents a straight line from the mound to the hitter, the ball remains concealed. It’s especially important to keep the body in front until the very end. And to deal the perfect pitch, I held my glove out in front of the batter’s eyes. As long as my line was in between, the batter had a shorter time to react. No. I wasn’t the best, not even close. In fact I was so scared that I was terrible, I didn’t try out for the high school team. This was after playing as a child for eight years.
But while this story seems to end on a note of skills becoming less and less relevant as I got older, the real catch was farther ahead in physics. Numbers to the history man seems to be an unnecessary theoretical assimilation of Egyptian hieroglyphics to plane crashes. Sure the symbols are there, but why calculate if the passengers are already dead? But what a physics teacher taught me in high school was that in the chaos of plane crashes, or pitching, we can come to terms with what makes an airplane pitch, or a baseball roll. My physics teacher explained events and things that occurred everyday, and all I had to do was find out for myself. Though I did not play baseball any longer, I dusted off the old glove, grabbed a couple baseballs, and headed for the backyard. Before I had thrown thousands of them at a wooden strike zone nailed to a tree, but now it seemed more powerful now than ever. The motion started, and as my right foot moved back and prepared for the kick my hands reached up towards the air. With the kick, there was a slight lean back, to balance the weight exchange to prepare for the leap forward in velocity. There was a lunge, and with it every muscle tweaked and cracked and hurled forward in motion as my right foot took the biggest step. The arm, while seeming to be most important, really carried the accuracy and added slight power to the legs. The ball screamed with initial velocity. And in my mind, there was a line that came out of the baseball. Numbers upon numbers calculating gravitational movement, wind resistances, and the final force as the loud “Smack!” fired off from the tree. Numbers singing.
Pitching never felt better. And that’s the role of educators, is it not? It is small and fragile, but present a historical world in which men wore wigs and painful foot binding was considered attractive, and it would be irrelevant unless the rhyme of time would be accounted. But teachers are only a whisper in a lifetime, and in order for that whisper to tickle those small parts of our ears, they must attempt earnestly to present a world in which numbers are seen everyday. We must present a life that is filled with historical revelations, of how it fundamentally allows us to preserve and protect and improve positive ways of life. For history, make them understand that right now, we are all pulling it, and are pulled by it. We are both pitcher and batter, and the what of today, is the why of yesterday. Make a student understand in their very soul that not only is history important, but do so with the events of today, so they may tell their children the why of their lives.
I threw fire, at least that’s what they told me. In those days of unmitigated youth the only conclusion that can be drawn from baseball and football was that they were superheroes. The kind of superheroes that stood for something, and what it was it could not be named. It’s the feeling when my father stood up and celebrated the winning pitch on television. It was watching the movie “Sandlot” and understanding that part of growing up sometimes was running for my life. To a child, it was the feeling of complete power, and complete freedom. And for that short time as a child or even a teen, we learn we slowly lose that simplistic paradise. In hindsight some conceive that childhood freedom to be ill used. For me, I was a left-handed pitcher.
They told me I threw fire. While this one kid threw faster but put bruises on their chests with wild forced exchanges, and the others were still trying to understand a curve ball, the great part about left-handed throwers is that we have a genetic advantage. When a left-handed pitcher throws a baseball, as long as his body presents a straight line from the mound to the hitter, the ball remains concealed. It’s especially important to keep the body in front until the very end. And to deal the perfect pitch, I held my glove out in front of the batter’s eyes. As long as my line was in between, the batter had a shorter time to react. No. I wasn’t the best, not even close. In fact I was so scared that I was terrible, I didn’t try out for the high school team. This was after playing as a child for eight years.
But while this story seems to end on a note of skills becoming less and less relevant as I got older, the real catch was farther ahead in physics. Numbers to the history man seems to be an unnecessary theoretical assimilation of Egyptian hieroglyphics to plane crashes. Sure the symbols are there, but why calculate if the passengers are already dead? But what a physics teacher taught me in high school was that in the chaos of plane crashes, or pitching, we can come to terms with what makes an airplane pitch, or a baseball roll. My physics teacher explained events and things that occurred everyday, and all I had to do was find out for myself. Though I did not play baseball any longer, I dusted off the old glove, grabbed a couple baseballs, and headed for the backyard. Before I had thrown thousands of them at a wooden strike zone nailed to a tree, but now it seemed more powerful now than ever. The motion started, and as my right foot moved back and prepared for the kick my hands reached up towards the air. With the kick, there was a slight lean back, to balance the weight exchange to prepare for the leap forward in velocity. There was a lunge, and with it every muscle tweaked and cracked and hurled forward in motion as my right foot took the biggest step. The arm, while seeming to be most important, really carried the accuracy and added slight power to the legs. The ball screamed with initial velocity. And in my mind, there was a line that came out of the baseball. Numbers upon numbers calculating gravitational movement, wind resistances, and the final force as the loud “Smack!” fired off from the tree. Numbers singing.
Pitching never felt better. And that’s the role of educators, is it not? It is small and fragile, but present a historical world in which men wore wigs and painful foot binding was considered attractive, and it would be irrelevant unless the rhyme of time would be accounted. But teachers are only a whisper in a lifetime, and in order for that whisper to tickle those small parts of our ears, they must attempt earnestly to present a world in which numbers are seen everyday. We must present a life that is filled with historical revelations, of how it fundamentally allows us to preserve and protect and improve positive ways of life. For history, make them understand that right now, we are all pulling it, and are pulled by it. We are both pitcher and batter, and the what of today, is the why of yesterday. Make a student understand in their very soul that not only is history important, but do so with the events of today, so they may tell their children the why of their lives.
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