The History of the World According to Marlene
Usually, on Independence Day, I have a barbeque at my house. This year was different; we went to my mother’s house.
Since it was hot and humid, a few of us ate dinner on the front porch: my brother, Matt; my husband, Mark; me; my dad, and Marlene. My brother is a classics major at University at Buffalo. He was talking about the movie, “Troy” and how it wasn’t accurate to the Trojan War.
Mom: Odysseus was stupid. It took him ten years to get home. It should taken him like a halfa hour.
Me: He got lost because he pissed off some gods.
Mom: I don’t care. He’s stupid. He coulda done it in a halfa hour.
Matt: It’s a considerable distance between Ithaca and Troy.
Dad: And there was no fast ferry.
Me: I read a book about a mermaid who fell in love with one of Odysseus’ men.
Mom: Well, that’s stupid. Mermaids can’t talk!
Me: The man was shipwrecked.
Mom: What the hell does a mermaid know? They can’t go anywhere.
Me: Never mind. Who do you like from history?
Mom: Leonardo da Vinci. He did the paintings and stuff. And he wrote “The Da Vinci Code”. In fact, he was so smart that he wrote “The Da Vinci Code” years ago and it just came out.
(I didn’t bother correcting this historical fallacy.)
Matt: What about Shakespeare?
Mom: Shakespeare was so stupid! He didn’t write his own stuff. There was this team of guys who wrote his stuff. That one guy-
Me: Marlowe?
Mom: Yeah, Marlowe. He did everything. They can’t find out where Shakespeare was for a few years of his life-
Mark: Yeah, they can. His father was a contraband wool merchant. Shakespeare was in hiding because he was affiliated with Catholicism.
Me: We watched the Michael Wood documentary on PBS. There were four parts.
Mom: Well, I don’t care. He’s still stupid.
Me: (irritated) Yeah, Mom. I don’t understand why UB doesn’t fire its entire classics and history departments and hire you to teach. Your course could be “Stupid People of History 101”.
Mom: (excited) You know who else was stupid? Moses. Why couldn’t he stay in one place? You know how long he was in the desert for?
Me: Forty years?
Mom: Yeah, a long time! That was stupid.
Me: (pause) What about Samuel Johnson?
Mom: He invented beer.
Mark: What about Gilgamesh?
Mom: Who the hell cares about him?
Mark: It’s gonna be a movie this summer.
Mom: So what? (pause) You know who I really hate in history? Who was really gross-tesque? That Henry the VIII guy. He had syphilis.
Me: How do you know? Did you watch him drip?
Mom: He had syphilis bad.
Mark: Okay, Marlene, so your final exam for your “stupid people in history” course would be all questions like “stupid” or “not stupid”. It would be like true or false. You’d just have a list of names and students would have to label them “stupid” or “not stupid”.
Mom: The trick question would be about Leonardo Da Vinci. He’s not stupid.
