I sat in the middle of a forest today and I could swear that not another soul has ever sat there before me. I cruised down a back road so remote that the leaves hadn't bothered to change color until they heard me comin' round the bend. I watched as the gas station's sign flashed it's price per gallon...4 cents less that the moments before. According to some dictionary definitions, Columbus and I have discovered places. According to other definitions, neither of us discovered anything, because we weren't FIRST... time, place or thing seen or realized.
It always pissed me off that I was taught Columbus "discovered" America. For some reason though I never bought in to the whole story, at least not the way it was still being presented in the textbooks of the early 70s, but it took years for anyone to offer the truer, more accurate version, which once surfaced subsided my resentment somewhat.
I never doubted his importance or mission, or that he sailed the ocean blue in 1492 aboard the Santa Maria along with two other ships, Pinta and Nina, which were no doubt full of men, supplies and Spanish whatnot in order to "discover" a new passage to India. But no one could or would ever explain the hypocrisy of claiming discovery of an inhabited land or for an existing idea. The question I posed repeatedly to get someone to admit the truth to me was this - If I "discovered" a 5 dollar bill on the kitchen table would it be mine to claim without repercussion? The answer varied somewhat, depending on who was "schooling" me, but basically I was assured that my discovery and Columbus' were two completely different things. I begged to differ, but it got me nowhere closer to a new passage to India than Columbus!
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