Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
It took a few more years after that to harden my little heart to the ugliness people were capable of, the new and horrific ways they came up with to harm one another, but I eventually came to detach myself from it the way my father had, and began to agree wholeheartedly with his mindset about understanding culture.
Because the more educated you were on such things, the less likely you were to be okay with atrocities happening to other people in your lifetime.
If you could step back and see the situation as it would appear in the history books, with clear aggressors and martyred victims, you were never going to side with the bad guys as it was happening.
Ignorance was the mother of most atrocities.
Since only ignorance could breed hatred and only hatred could create evil. And only evil people could hate one another for things as trivial as the color of their skin, how they worshipped, and where they lived.
So the more we could get our youth passionate about education, about history in particular, the brighter the future would look.
It was why I contributed a lot of donations to public education television. Why I gave my money to documentary streaming services as opposed to entertainment ones. And why I was going to help this annoyingly hot professor with his app.
You had to meet the kids in their spaces to pique their interest.
TV. Movies. Music. Games.
I’d actually had one student impress me with his knowledge of a couple historical figures that he claimed he learned by watching and listening to a music video that actually had people acting like those figures and battle rapping.
One of the other professors on campus once tried to, well, turn one of his lectures into a rap.
It, yeah, it hadn’t gone well.
To quote the kids, it was “cringe.”
Though, apparently, he’d gotten over a hundred-thousand likes on a video a student uploaded of the whole debacle.
“Professor! Look what I got!” Tilly, one of the afternoon librarians said as I started to walk past her desk.
In her hand was a massive brick of a book with a blue and gold cover that I’d never seen before.
“Oh, what is that?” I asked, moving closer.
Because if there was one thing that could distract me from my meeting with the hot professor, it was a good new book. Especially one coming from Tilly who had the best taste in books I’d ever come across.
“This, my darling girl, is a book about Ariadne.”
“Ariadne?” I asked, feeling the same kind of joy a child felt seeing their presents on Christmas morning swell up inside me.
“Yep.”
“But… but she’s such a minor character in the myths!” I said, thinking of her involvement with the whole Theseus and Minotaur myth.
“A minor character in a book written by men, sure. But these new writers these days, they are giving voices to the women in the stories who were so overlooked.”
I had to put the current stack of books I was holding down on her desk to do “gimmie” fingers at her.
“This is such a good way to get the younger generations interested in these stories. I bet this is written in a more engaging way, too,” I said.
Sure, I’d come to love classics and the types of voices the authors used when writing them, but even I could admit that they could be a bit dry and complicated. Modern retellings made the stories more accessible to readers who didn’t enjoy that kind of prose.
“You are the absolute best,” I told her, putting the book on the top of my stack.
“I either love or hate to break this to you, but there is an extremely good-looking man roaming around your little section of the library.”
“Oh, yes. I’m meeting him,” I said. “I’m running a little late.”
“Honey, if a man like that is waiting on you, I can’t imagine what else could tie you up,” she said, shooing me.
I was not typically a woman who got nervous around men. Likely because I’d been so surrounded by them as I was growing up. My father had several female professor friends as well, but it was mostly guys always at the house, discussing “smart people stuff,” as I used to call it.
As I got older and was showing signs of being bright, I was allowed to join in on their conversations. They listened to me and encouraged my interest, giving me a sort of unshakable confidence around the types of men others would likely find very intimidating if they hadn’t been raised around them.
So when I’d gone off to college, I hadn’t been bothered by my professors.
No, the only guys who intimidated me were my peers. Guys who had little to no interest in the academic things I found so fascinating. Ones who were more intrigued by what bodies could do than what minds could think.