Make Mine Mike

I forgot to post this for the holiday yesterday. Even though it wasn't an official holiday back when I was in kindergarten, my elementary school still lauded the work of Martin Luther King. We celebrated the birthdays of all those historical icons of American history, and as a little kid I must’ve gotten them mixed up.

I came home from school with a cut-out silhouette of one of those guys and my mother raved at my work. (I had failed scissors in pre-school, so it was a particular accomplishment.) “That’s great,” she said. “Who is it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s either George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther Columbus.”

She asked who George Washington was and I recited that whole father-of-our-country, first president, chopped-down-the-cherry-tree, I-cannot-tell-a-lie schtick (which even at that age I suspected was a myth to keep kids in line).

“Very good,” Mom said. “So who’s Abraham Lincoln?”

“He was the good president who got shot by the bad president.”

“Who’s the bad president?”

“Richard Nixon.”

“Okay,” she said. “And ‘Martin Luther Columbus’?”

“He had a dream that the world was round.”