"The Road... I Had No Idea Existed"

Recently, with, as usual, plenty of time on my hands, I started to wonder…

Could I have been a history teacher instead of what I was – a career participant in an endeavor, wherein “Everything about it is appealing”?

This hardly a frivolous question.  Unlike, for example, “Could I have been a trapeze artist?”, to which the suitable answer is, “You mean in the air?” 

I notice that what I almost entirely read now is history.  I have called it “Soap opera with real people.”  Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?  Though it can admittedly also be frustrating.  You research some historical figure, “What were they like?”  The answer comes back, “It depends who you ask.”

I just completed a short biography of John F. Kennedy.  It’s hard to speak ill of the assassinated.  Historian Arthur Schlesinger observed,

“He had accomplished so much… Lifting us beyond our capacities… he gave the country back its best self…”

Still, commentator Malcolm Muggeridge curmudged,

“John F. Kennedy, it is now coming to be realized, was a nothing man – an expensively programmed waxwork…”

Leaving me, going, “Which was he?”  And did those dueling perceptions have anything to do with their unequal relationship to Kennedy and how proportionately envious they were that the late president regularly “liased” with Marilyn Monroe.  Evaluating validity, one must always ask, “Who’s talking?” and “What’s up with that guy?”   

MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE:  “We had the same initials.  And yet she never read me!”              

Uncertainty in history is not always an issue.  Some facts are unequivocally… “It’s that.”

There is this story about two Belgians, meeting after the end of World War I.  One of them says,

“I wonder what history will say about this war?”

And the other replies,

“I know what history won’t say.  It’s won’t say, ‘Belgium invaded Germany.’”

Some historical pronouncements you can comfortably take to the bank.

Pondering my future, I never thought about being a history teacher.  Or anything else for that matter, as I harbored these long-shot “Hooray for Hollywood” aspirations.  My behavior was totally insane.  Somebody offered me a full-time job in advertising.  I said, “No, thanks, I’d rather stay in show business.” 

And I wasn’t in show business at the time.

Teaching history was never a consideration.  And I now wonder “Why not?”  If I like history so much today, I must have liked it at least somewhat back then.  But it does not feel like I did.  And I think I know why.

Back then, for me, “History” specifically meant Canadian history.

And nobody likes that.

Because, as I recall it – and I recall very little – in Canadian history,

Nothing… happens.

Not totally nothing.  Otherwise, it’s (KNOCK, KNOCK) “Are you in there?”

But it’s “minimum.”

“Highlights in Canadian History” in two sentences?

In 1759, England fought France for Canada and England won.

In 1867, Canada petitioned England to become its own country and England said, “Fine.”

That’s it.  That’s our whole history.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but check this out.  A comparison between The American Revolution (“Give me liberty or give me death”), and the “Ontario Rebellion of 1837.”

From The Oxford History of the American People by Samuel Elliot Morisson…

“(William Lyon) Mackenzie… took the road to rebellion… drafted a declaration of independence on 31 July 1836, armed and drilled thousands of settlers, and set a date, 7 December 1837, for the patriots to capture Toronto… Under Mackenzie’s vacillating and incompetent leadership, the rebels were defeated in their march on Toronto by one volley delivered by a loyal sheriff and 27 militiamen from behind a rail fence.”

There is no way that will ever be a movie.

“One volley, and it’s over?  We’re going to pass.”

Canadian readers – help me out here.  Am I missing something?  They wrote a “declaration of independence.”  They didn’t even use capitals!

Though I wound up where I wanted to be, I’d hate to think I never thought about doing something because it was too dull to think about doing by mistake.

Who knows?

I could have actually had options.