The Answer Isn't Obvious Options

[xXYouMeBedNowXx]

In my Advanced History Class, we were given time to observe the room and jot notes, take them home, interpret them, and create a history with the evidence we found in the room. This is my interpretation:

When many people search for things, when we try to observe, we usually look for the big stuff; usually the obvious stuff. We use the most obvious sense available to us, the most obvious tool available to us, which is to see, and we observe under a scope of generality. We move about and we look on the desks for the papers, we scan the trophies by the windows for dates, and we look at the photographs posted on the wall for who’s who. But while we take a look at the big picture, even if we are standing right up at it, we miss a crucial point: that many times those obvious things will lead us to obvious conclusions. Looking up close is not the equivalent of looking at closely. It’s like the first chapter of the book Catch 22, nestled appropriately between the various books on law and government. The main character must censor the letters he’s sending home while he’s in the hospital -- and many of us are doing the same thing: we look over the smaller, insignificant objects, unconsciously leaving them out and jotting the brute stuff on our notes, only to take them back to our houses to try to reconstruct what’s really going on. Instead, why don’t we look for the more interesting things by looking in interesting ways to draw, well, interesting conclusions? It is of course, what we defined History’s essence as: a Human Interest Story. Instead of observing that there’s a popcorn box over there placed behind Mr. Fox’s desk on a bookshelf and concluding that “Mr. Fox likes popcorn”, why not take a look at the dust on that box, and conclude that it’s been there for a long time? That perhaps, Mr. Fox has been here for a long time? That maybe that popcorn box at one time didn’t have dust on it, like many of the other objects scattered about the room. Things like the couch over at the corner, no longer used to sit on by human bases but rather by those of storage boxes; that the McDougal Littell supplies have crawled their way along the tables and onto the cushions with time. That the supplies that were once in those boxes were on the tables you sit at now. But instead of looking what’s been on a table, why not looking what’s under it? You might find that all thirty-four of those tables have perhaps at least one piece of gum or adhesive happily floating above your thighs this very moment. That the happy-sticky-in-someone-else’s-mouth-once collage under your desk is an accumulation of a many few students’ hobbies. Students that have walked through that door, at some point or another, leaving in their wake a trail of dust and mud stains on the floor, choreographed according to the arrangement of these thirty-four desks. Some of those students have been on the Gov. Team, some of those students are on the Gov. Team, and might one day have a photograph memorabilia of their own on the wall like so many others have, as far as ’96; that someday they too might send a gift, but preferably not a stool posing question to incest or a yellow Psyduck left by the cabinet, which is supporting the lingering green noodle with the writing on it. And what else has been written on? paper, yes, much of which has been thrown into the large gray trash bin. Hinted that trash bin tells a story on its own in the order of past to present, bottom to surface. But in the same sense, we are the trash – and that trash bin is our little container that we call the Earth. We pile on top of each other with time, generation after generation, telling our story, from bottom to surface. All that we have to do, the ones near the top, is to dig a little deeper to learn about our past. All the while we’re making history, with every second, with every word. Even to this one. Two days ago, we were asked, “Why are we here?” It’s an interesting question, and it probably has an interesting answer; simply because, to stay touché, the answer isn’t obvious.

[xXYouMeBedNowXx]

thank you all. :D