Chewing on History
Home from school, his grandson sat down with a scowl at the kitchen table.
Grandfather asked, “How are you, son?”
The boy replied with a deep sigh, “The teacher gave me a sixty on my history exam. I don’t like history one little bit!”
“Oh,” said Grandfather, “what don’t you like about history?” as he set a plate of cookies and a glass of milk before the boy.
“Well, what does history do anyway? History is just stuff that has already happened; who cares?”
“Aaah”, shared Grandfather. There was a pause, and then Grandfather continued, “If I thought history was only about the past, I agree, it does seem useless. But you asked a very good question.”
“I did?” asked the boy, “What question was that?”
“You asked, what does history do? That is a good question and my answer is that it makes very good eating.”
“Grandfather,” the boy offered kindly, “You can’t eat history.”
Up went grandfather’s eyebrows, “Have you not heard that when you eat cookies, you are eating and chewing on history.”
“Grandfather, that’s crazy,” then with some hesitation, added, “How can I eat and chew history?”
“Another good question. Before we start chewing on a cookie, there is a series of events. If no previous events, then no cookies, no chewing.”
“Ok, I get it. Things like cookies come from someplace before they are on a plate.” He pointed to the plate in front of him, then added, “I still don’t like history”, and folded his arms across his chest.
“Do you know something else history can do? It puts a jumbled closet in order!”
“Grandfather, history does not put a messy closet in order!”
“Here is what I mean. A closet is a place where we put stuff we don’t need right now, and, in a manner of speaking, that is what history does, too. However, a lot of disorganized facts from the past are not very useful. So history puts all those disorganized facts in order, the order of a story. History puts the jumble in order.”
Grandfather, “I think I prefer just to leave the stories of history in the closet; they can stay in there.”
“Some history will stay there, and some history is ready to talk to us now.”
“Grandfather history is in books. It doesn’t even know we exist; how can it talk to us?”
“The way I see it, history tells me stuff all the time.”
“Like what? The year Napoleon was born?”
“Could do, but usually I ask history stuff like, how did I get here? Because maybe I want to go back to where I came from, or maybe I never want to go back. Oh, by the way, what is your favorite thing to watch on the television?”
“I like zombies; they scare everybody!”
“Quite right, zombies, that’s history too.”
“Grandfather, zombies are not real.”
“Well, you remembered you like zombies. What you remember is part of history. No history, no memory. Without history, you’d forget about the zombies.”
“Ok, Grandfather, I get it. History does a lot of stuff; it tells us everything comes from some place, puts things in order, and it can talk to us when we remember things like I like zombies. I guess it’s not totally useless, we can like history just a little bit.”
Then, a moment later, he looked up at Grandfather, and with a twinkle in his eye, asked, “Do you think I could chew some more history?”
“Well, of course. We will chew a few historical oatmeal cookies together.”
The End