America Through The Eyes of its Children

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America Through The Eyes of its Children
by Heather Roscoe

Four year old Jordan concentrated on the yellow lego in his hand, but chose to ignore me. I asked him one more time if he knew what the fourth of July was. He looked at me with wide brown eyes, "When I'm six, I'm gonna do fireworks on the fourth of July, that's what my momma said," he paused for a moment, "what does dis do?" He asked, waving a newly formed lego creation under my nose.

***
When I was young I read so much that my mother actually became concerned. She would catch me in deep perusal by flashlight after I was supposed to be in bed--I never read novellas or comics but history books. I devoured everything that I could find on ancient cultures, the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, the Romans, Jews, Muslims, Chinese, Greeks, the Romanovs and the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution...but there was one thing that I wouldn't go near and that was American history.

I still do not know why I hated American history so much. Perhaps it was the lack of it. America simply isn't old enough. There are no ancient relics, no ruins, no monarchies or even huge scandals. The people who made up American history weren't exotic, they looked and talked like me. They were normal.

The bravery and sacrifice that these people made for my sake didn't register with me. It was not until I was an early teen that I decided it was about time I forced myself to learn something about American history or fall behind in the world, so I forced myself to learn.

To this day it's still my least favorite thing to do, but I am trying.

***
Christian and Jesse, cousins, were playing on a tree swing when I asked them if they knew why we celebrated the fourth of July. Christian, ten years old and by far the more outspoken of the two explained "we celebrate the fourth of July because some guy signed a piece of paper...and it was really cool."

Jesse wasn't certain, but he suspected that we won a war and that's why we celebrated independence day. This was a little more encouraging. My spirits dropped however when we told me confidently that it was World War II which won us our independence.

I asked my sixteen year old brother what he thought of the fourth of July. He promised to co-operate only if I used his full name. Joshua Keith Roscoe told me that we celebrate the fourth of July because we won the Revolutionary war.

I asked Josh's fifteen year old friend why he though we used fireworks. "to commemorate death," was the reply.

"How," I asked, "are we supposed to remember death with fireworks?"

"It's simple," Josh answered, "by blowing your eyes out you remember death."

This entire conversation had become somewhat discouraging.

The truth is, most of the children I spoke with feel the same way that I did about American history, it is not much more than a play by play narrative about a bunch of quarrelling politicians who wore wigs and baseball pants to court.

***
One of my first memories is of Independence day. I have no idea how old I was but somehow I managed to get a sparkler firework stuck in the zipper of my best friend's jacket. I remember thinking how pretty it looked and then my mother let out a shriek and started tearing at Katie's coat. The outcome must not have been too terrible because she's still alive and still my best friend.

Another year, when I was probably only four or five years old, the neighbor boy took me by the hand and led me into the middle of the street. "You're really going to like this," he told me as he slowly filled a plastic cup full of gasoline and a few other evil smelling chemicals. Placing a fuse into the cup and lighting the other end, he picked me up and ran to a ditch and watched it explode, sending an oily, black, mushroom cloud into the air. "Isn't that awesome?" he shouted.

"Awesome." I repeated.

Then there was the time I lit a small firework in my hand with every intention of throwing it into the air and watching it explode. Instead it blew up in my hand. Suddenly my whole world shattered into one shimmering cloud and I saw thirteen years of classical piano training flash before my eyes. Then my ears started ringing and I began to shake. I could not feel my fingers for about three days.

Everything seems to be functional now.

***
I want to complain that Independence day has traversed the same trail as Christmas and Easter, and instead of a celebration of independence it's a celebration of machismo, to see who can find the loudest, biggest most illegal fireworks.

Likewise, I am tempted to predict that doom is approaching with the young Americans who think that we won our independence with World War II.

But that would be unfair.

I realized that although our history may not be as fascinating as the ancients, that's our blessing. I thought about the eruption of Vesuvius, the collapse of the Romanov family, the dealings of Attila the Hun and Ivan the Terrible and remembered that inevitably history will happen and when it does it will be packed with atrocities. And when these atrocities eventually come to pass I will end up wishing that they did not happen at all.

So, I have nothing to complain about. Shocking isn't it?