Did You Know…The People Verses Athingirl

  I was prattling with Dale Rogerson over my love of history, how sadly many people aren’t interested in it, which brought up the subject of reading becoming a lost art.

 How social media has taken young minds (and old) hostage with its false sense of self-importance.

 Who cares about knowledge when I can tell you what I had for dinner and what shoes I wore.

 I mean…come on. George Washington? Isn’t that a bridge?

 All I know is, I’m at my best sharing something I’ve read, my passion hoping to ignite yours.

  I never went to school, including high school even though enrolled at a fancy private one where as long as your tuition was paid, didn’t care much if you showed up or not.

 My memories consist of necking in the back of Mary Richards’s GTO with whomever was sitting beside me, hidden by the aura of pot smoke.

 My point?

 I hunger for knowledge, so wishing instead of becoming an airhead model…

WENT TO SCHOOL!

 There, I’ve come clean. Of course, can you truthfully expect a listener to care that both Jackie and Lincoln had big feet?

 And that Abe wrote the Gettysburg Address on a napkin on the train, and because it was so short (272 words) he thought he bombed like a late night comic?

 Or that Winston Churchill was described looking like a whale when he swam, while Teddy Roosevelt’s mother and first wife died on the same Valentine’s Day?

 See, all you need to do is plug me in and I chirp like a pre-recorded podcast.

 But that’s what happens.

 Books are like lavish buffets, picking and choosing what entices from the page, creating files to tap into.

 Knowledge makes you more interesting, said Dale, and I agree with her. To be able to share something that caught your fancy…

 Martin Luther King having a pillow fight with his peers just hours before he died; quoting a great writer like Mark Twain...worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.

 President Ronald Reagan, after he was shot, about to be operated on said to the doctors…please tell me you’re Republicans.

  Dale and I both agreed, it doesn’t matter if you were lucky enough to be introduced early to reading, or picked it up in late-flowering enthusiasm, to quote writer Alan Bennett, as long as you finally found each another.

Did you know? 

SB