We just got back from a delicious dinner where Jason and I, the only Americans at the table, found ourselves proudly tracing our ancestry back to the Mayflower.
Don’t ask. I really have no idea.
Us
Them
We were out numbered by Europeans, and our self-satisfied Mayflowerian pontifications did not impress as we’d hoped, but rather inspired our table mates to spit up their drinks, roar with laughter and fall all over the place because, according to them, the Mayflower was packed to the brim with whores, murderers, morons and thieves.
“Look at you idiots! So proud! It’s a known fact that everybody on the Mayflower had cyphillus.”
That’s what they were honestly taught in school! All of them, and they all went to different schools in different countries!
:-/
They learned nothing about the few, the proud, the brave, risking their lives on a noble quest for freedom. Their Mayflower was all about dumping Europe’s unwanted stinky trash on the American Indians.
I mean yes, duh, of course, but it honestly never occurred to me before.
Relentless ridiculing ensued, but Jason and I fought back like our mighty forefathers, all of us eventually unraveling in howling hysterics. If we’d been anywhere but Spain, we’d have been asked to leave the restaurant (a recent survey apparently rated Spain the second loudest country after India).
It made me think:
Ah, the convenience of history.
The fluidity of perspective.
The seriousness of nothing.
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