My childhood beliefs

[beboots]

 I've been thinking a lot lately on my childhood outlook on life. What were things that you believed as a child?

-My mother always tells me the story that when we moved away from Germany to Ottawa when my twin sister and I were three, we were under the impression that Ottawa was on a different planet. And what is a jet plane but a spaceship? (Also: were we that wrong?)

-I didn't understand the difference between "erase" and "wash". I remember once when my little brother scribbled all over a colouring book of mine in permanent marker. When my pink eraser wouldn't work, I filled up the bathroom sink with water and dumped the book in, assuming that the purple and yellow lines would come right off. I was sorely mistaken, and had a dissolved colouring book. I was not happy that this hadn't worked. 

-Cars had personalities, and their headlights were their eyes. I still judge cars this way: if the "eyes" are too big, I think it looks dopey. If a car looks "mean", I don't like it. There are certain vehicles that I simply will never consider buying because on some subliminal level I still think of them as having personalities like this. 

Comments

[feral-shrew.livejournal.com]

"P.S.: How was the war of 1812 addressed in the American curriculum? At the very best it was a tie, y/y?" I had pretty crap history teachers for the vast majority of middle and elementary school (with 5th and 6th grade as the exceptions, and they covered different material). IF the class addressed the war, and said more than "Dolly Madison was running around in the burning White House saving paintings and a few really important historical artifacts" (simplification, by the way, because it wasn't called the White House until Teddy Roosevelt was in, and he was the first man to have this said about him: "do you realize that this madman is a heartbeat away from the presidency?" Sure enough, he was--McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, NY at the Panamerican Exposition, and THAT probably saved T.R.'s life because when T.R. was shot on the most epic third-party run in ages, he refused to let anybody take the bullet out. )

/end history-babble.

"Also, Canadian history is totally badass. Few seem to realize this, even Canadians." It is! Europeans could barely deal with a VIRGINIAN winter. They would have been completely and totally screwed without some helpful Native Americans. (This part is only mentioned around Thanks

"Yes, that's exactly the article I'm thinking of. Notoriously horrific. D: "

It took me forever to get through. I kept stopping to rage/vent/cry/yell/go read something happy. THAT is why I tell people to go read Huckleberry Finn and mind the historical context. It is one of the best books out there, and I think internationally it deserves a little more attention. Twain was a genius at replicating the language of the time, and there's an outstanding passage in there-- Huck says "well then, I'll go to hell" (or something quite close) and does the wrong thing. He's going to help Jim (escaped slave), not go talk to the woman that owns him. That's actually completely against morals of the era.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Yeah, history teachers at the elementary level like to pick a few good "characters" to talk about, and that's it. :P

"Europeans could barely deal with a VIRGINIAN winter. They would have been completely and totally screwed without some helpful Native Americans." Oh yeah, definitely. I vividly remember a scene from that documentary, Canada: A People's History in which David Thompson, later a famous explorer but then a clerk for the Hudson's Bay Company, spent a lot of a winter just pacing his small room in his giant fur coat, miserably trying to keep warm.

You're actually the second person to recommend Huck Finn today! I've never read the whole thing - I think I saw the Wishbone version when I was a child? - and it IS a part of popular culture, but... yeah. It's on my summer reading list. :3

[feral-shrew.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, history teachers at the elementary level like to pick a few good "characters" to talk about, and that's it. :P" And then they get them wrong. 'Harriet Tubman was brave' does not REMOTELY cover it. She was a fucking badass. She was an epileptic, and at one point she fell over convulsing while tour-guiding slaves out of the South, and when she woke up she had a (correct) vision that they had to change routes a bit. One one of her (19, I think, it's been a while) visits back to the South, she saw her parents. Her father blindfolded himself. He was such a devoutly honest man that everyone took him at his word when he said that he hadn't seen his daughter. Then, in case she wasn't awesome enough, she was a spy during the Civil War.

"Oh yeah, definitely. I vividly remember a scene from that documentary, Canada: A People's History in which David Thompson, later a famous explorer but then a clerk for the Hudson's Bay Company, spent a lot of a winter just pacing his small room in his giant fur coat, miserably trying to keep warm." Exactly! They had little houses and fire and kept burning trees, and they were barely floating.

"You're actually the second person to recommend Huck Finn today! I've never read the whole thing - I think I saw the Wishbone version when I was a child? - and it IS a part of popular culture, but... yeah. It's on my summer reading list. :3"

It deserves the place on the reading list. A new version went out that takes out all 219 (apparently) uses of the N-word, but it's... that's what people SAID. Twain was an absolute genius at reproducing dialect, and that's how people spoke. There's an amazing little piece of self-conflict with Huck, when he decides to do the wrong thing. He knows in his heart he'll go to hell for it, but he's not going to go tell Mrs. Thomas/Wallace/something that Jim (her slave) escaped. It's one of the best passages that I've ever read, and if I remember I'll post it sometime.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Aww yeah Tubman was a badass. :3 You are so right about that. I think that she went back at least 20 times THAT WE KNOW OF. Secrecy and all that. I seem to remember that there was this epic incident with her during the Civil War in which she snuck behind enemy lines and managed to rescue like 300 people in one go. That wasn't a typo: actually THREE HUNDRED people. Of course, she didn't have to take them WAY North because she just had to get back to the Union lines, but still!

Oh yeah, if you get enraged about that censored Huck Finn... check out this parody video, which pretty much says all that's needed to be said: http://laughingsquid.com/replacing-the-n-word-with-robot-in-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn/

[feral-shrew.livejournal.com]

Tubman was a freaking badass, SO much yes-- I had to do a project on her in 5th grade, and I turned it into a board game. "Can you get about 20 people up into the North with you." I got to add in all the little details I could find-- I liked that project.

The Huck Finn censoring makes me irritated, but not quite enraged. The rest of the story is so damn good that if people will only read it with "slave" added in all over, fine. People NEED that book, and I think that last section (which annoys about everybody) actually fit really, really well in the original context. Twain wanted you to take a side.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

I want to play that game. >_> You could perhaps make money off of it if you patented it...?

I definitely think, without even having read the book, that yes, there was a point to having all of those "n-words" in there in the first place. Sanitizing the past like that doesn't really help people understand it better. I can see some people thinking "oh, it wasn't THAT bad", reading a version like this. :( Not a good idea.

[feral-shrew.livejournal.com]

The only part I didn't like about Huck Finn is that Jim spends a great portion of the book resembling several stereotypes, but I think Huck's more than worth it-- there's also the fantastic passage where Huck is trying to pose as a girl, and it just isn't working.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

I'm still going to have to read it. At the very least I presume that Jim never says he enjoys being a slave...? D:

[feral-shrew.livejournal.com]

Jim doesn't want to be a slave, and definitely wants to run away, and he helps Huck at several points.

My favorite part of that entire book is Huck's little soliloquy when he decides just what he's going to do about Jim. It redeemed the book for me after all of the "okay, hello stereotype #17."

That's why I could never, ever stand with most Harry Potter characters on house elves. "They like it." "They need to do this." "They'd hate getting paid." All while they're speaking in a terribly stereotypical speech pattern generally associated with not-particularly-intelligent black people. Dobby is a great character, but he can't single-handedly redeem all of the bad, bad things that little kids are taking in.