Which Day is History?

When is the question history can never tell us because it is always and never for someone. 

And everyone is rarely possible, but many

is a blessing only found when the puzzle is given attention to be solved carefully.

I like to debate and some may call that rebellious,

and maybe that is so because today I debated about rebellion.

The air was thick with competition I never signed up for

though dragged me as a lost puppy towards liberation.

Adjusting my hair and shirt was an occurrence each second

like I was trying to straighten out sounds waves with chaotic movements. 

And I loved it

because I felt like my eyes got knocked around

 so that I could see

the doors others opened with a new pair of shoes.

It was all school-assigned but I gave my heart to the side chosen for me without a price tag sticking out.

I talked about everything from the Boston Massacre to Committee of Correspondence to the Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time, William Pitt.

I eagerly quoted my 14 pages of meticulous notes that were prepared for the heated moments.

I crafted each flame thrown my way into ice sculptures, turning everything into masterpieces directed at us-the Loyalists- over to the Patriotic side.

Across the tables were my friends

and I gave them dead eyes served on a golden platter while passionately speaking  for British defense and at some point

the game stopped.

I never believed every word out of my mouth, but I knew they were truths that the new America fights adamantly to forget.

I wondered where we went wrong in history.

Where we only told the Patriotic side 

because they landed on top even against all odds.

When loyalists were colonists too.

I wondered where everyone got it mixed up into thinking that the Quartering Act allowed soldiers into personal homes because that's what my teacher said in 2022.

Confusion considers the flickering memory shoved into those deep vats of isolation and history to be forgotten.

The boiling tar put on loyalists by patriots for the reason of non-compliance to their beliefs (mind us, these are the same people--the patriots-- who protest in the name of acquiring freedom of speech to their liking) they vouched for was discredited, but the Boston Massacre wasn't. 

The Boston Massacre was not by definition a massacre- it was a terrible event of a shooting- but why was it exaggerated? 

To be defenseless means to have nothing. It can be unequal, but you have to have nothing and do nothing to be the martyr of a massacre.

 Did the patriots believe that the facts alone could not cause the hearts of politically teetering colonists to be touched? 

Did they know that the image of mobs screaming threats and insults (verbal assault), throwing ice, rocks, ect., and crowding around a guard standing between them an a door.

The first shot that was fired was like a bell. A school bell at the end of the day but instead this time, it was the end of their life.

It is always forgotten that the man who fired the shot was beaten to the ground first and only had his rifle aimed upwards in defense. He could have been angry and/or drunk/or aiming for the kill

Was the shot made to kill?

Did it matter? Death is absolute with no ending.

Both events are evils that need to be remembered. But I will always remember how I never learned about the tar, the assaults, the battery, the harassment and death tolling each street with Patriots holding the GO sign. 

Instead I learned that the British enforced unjust taxes and the colonists defended their rights, which Britain hated and lashed out which caused the Revolutionary War.

Wars are fought by two sides, and I only ever learned about one side through coloring sheets and presentations; after siting the pledge of allegiance and seeing the American flag being raised each morning at my school's parking lot.

Where was was it found to be an ancient scripture of a dedicated religion to America (?) that George Washington could do no wrong but the king could. Both were leaders with final says and others by their sides in varying positions.

And I wonder where I myself learning about all these great explorers and leaders

who also owned slaves (10 at the time in 5th grade I later realize).

George Washington bought approximately seven slaves in 1775 alone with hundreds total.

He was not an evil man wholly, but slavery is mockery on humanity at its finest and he participated in it for almost his whole life. Calling your kin with different melanin levels tainted to be nothing more than property is what clouds innocent lives and leaves ash-lined tracks.

George Washington was one not tainted--but soaked--by a society where the well-being of your group alone was top priority.

There was a patriot who wrote a Boston-Gazette newspaper on October 7, 1765 calling saying that the British government was enslaving them and that for future colonists, they need to break free from this injustice.

But enslavement of all words, from a patriot who's likely wealthy, owning slaves?

Calling British procedures and society something that is enslaving wealthy white males?

Why did slavery become so lax at the time?

When was it recognized as unjust taxes and not trafficking those thought by others to be property because they are "less than" and need to serve you without any mistakes or face immediate whippings at the better end? 

When did the humanity in history be erased?

All we have left is countries going head to head tallying their wins and losses.

And then, as I spoke each crafted sentence that won the debate for my team by a landslide, I did not feel like I betraying my country.

A part of me should have, but a part of me understood that in my head, it was 1775 during the debate.

It was a pendulum of effects and choices made, none of them being specifically wrong to go away from Britain. But staying was not wrong either.

We chose to become this version of this universe in this thread and that idea threatens the pride in our choices. 

I talk about yesterday, and hope for tomorrow.