History

I need to leave soon to go read to my 3rd graders. Just now I started thinking about what last night's news about Osama Bin Laden being killed means to them.  They were born into a world where there were no Twin Towers.  They've never gone through an airport without taking off their shoes.  There was never a time when OBL wasn't a figure of malice.  Which is strange to think because there was a good twenty years when I didn't have the slightest clue who OBL was.  And I started to think about when I was in third grade.  And we had to do a report on countries all over the world.  We pulled country names out of a hat, which determined who was going to report on what.  And I was so jealous of the kids that got cool places like Italy or the Bahamas.  Because I pulled Germany out of the hat.  And that seemed b-o-r-i-n-g.  But then, the week my report was due, the Berlin Wall came down.  And I didn't really know what that meant but I knew that it was a big deal because it was all over the news.  So I got to add that to my report at the last minute with newspaper clippings and I felt really cool.  And it wasn't until much later that I understood how significant that event was.  Really, it wasn't until senior year of college, when the last class I took in college went abroad to study in Germany for two weeks. And I stood in Berlin and looked down at the ground, where the wall used to stand, and it all became very real.  I finally understood why that week my report was due in 3rd grade meant so much.

And now I'm headed to an elementary school, where I'll start reading to two young classes a fun chapter book about a boy who comes up with a new word for the word "pen" and I wonder what last night's news will come to mean to these kids down the line.