Harper's Fairy

Tomorrow my friends Eleanor and Caitlin and I are going to Harper’s Ferry.  If you don’t know why that is really, really exciting to me, then you aren’t Derek.  On a family vacation/college tour, said person made his family drive hours out of the way to visit it for me.  “For me” meaning “to prove me wrong” in this context, about there being water and boats.

 

The reason that it is significant to me, for those who don’t know:

About a week before the AP U.S. history test (a subject I’m pretty good at, if you ask me and a select other few who will lie on my behalf), we were doing a Q&A with Ms. Mayberry, about various things we were confused about.  We started talking about slave revolts, which there are a lot of (Stono rebellion, Turner’s slave rebellion), or enough to get their dates/significance to history confused.  So I asked her “Which one was that slave revolt that happened on a boat?”

Then something scary happened.  She didn’t say anything at first, and then said, “What revolt on a boat?”

“You know, the one with the big boat where all the slaves try to escape with that dude.”

“No, I don’t know.  What are you talking about?  Do you mean [x blah blah, no boat, regular revolt thing, actual history being discussed?]”

“No, there’s definitely a boat.”

[Class is silent until some other clueless person makes an attempt.]  “Yeah, with the ferry.”

At some point after about seven minutes of one of us thinking they were crazy, Mayberry finally realizes I’m talking about Harper’s Ferry, which, despite having a boat word like “ferry”, has nothing to do with boats or water.  So, no, John Brown did not swing onto a steam/regular boat full of rescued slaves, only to be caught and hanged for his attempts.  There were no boats at Harper’s Ferry.  There were railroads.  The word ferry doesn’t always mean boat, you dumb Southern California native who will never understand U.S. History.

However, all that changes tomorrow.  History will be rewritten, at the hands of its most beloved heroine.  What I’m saying is, I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence.

The fact that this dude can be totally misportrayed in a painting like the one below means history's already been doctored.  I'm just taking it a step further, and a step cooler, to be honest.

Let's be real, there was no baby kissing.

Okay, so that Nick Cage moment wasn’t funny, probably, but it was a perfect opportunity.  In real life, I am going tomorrow and going to take lots of pictures to expose/fabricate the truth about Harper’s Ferry, where there were boats and slaves and eventually hangings.  My photo exposé will grace the pages of this blog, have no fear.  I may even do a rendition of Halo, in which John Brown weighs his imminent death should he start a revolt with the needs of the slaves, with lines such as “It’s a risk that I’m takin’/ But I’ve really got to save those slaves”.

Just kidding.  There may be a song, because nothing is real unless there’s a song about it, but I won’t touch the beauty (I wrote putty instead of beauty here at first.  If that’s a Freudian slip, I don’t know what it means) that is our AP U.S. History project.  Regardless, I hope at the end of the day the truth can come out, and that I don’t offend any black people or historians in the process.  Sorry in advance.

My blog was originally going to be about my dissatisfaction with the drunk culture of college.  Hopefully the topic of Harper’s Ferry is more entertaining in its self-deprecation, versus me hating on all the people who think “I didn’t remember this weekend, it must’ve been rad”.  I know that’s not you, Jason, you can handle yourself.  But it’s true of some other people and I feel sad about it, because I feel like when you’re a part of that crowd, you can’t say “I’m not fulfilled by this”, not only because of peer pressure, but because you don’t even realize that there are happy alternatives, such as staying in your room all the time like I do :) .  This cheap comedy video made me think about that.

So this post didn’t outline my week.  “Why not!?” you may ask, clamoring for more information so eagerly that this sentence about your actions has to end in an exclamation to be accurate!  My answer: “Well, dumbies, it’s because my week was somewhat dull.  I’ll give a few points of information, because you’re worth it.”

On Saturday, there was the STay Awake aNd Dance-a-thon (not sure about the hyphens there), with that random capitalization because it’s called STAND for short.  It was a night full of fundraising for charities, dancing, and service projects.  Mostly dancing and eating and raffle-winning.  I found a way to make blankets the whole time.  Only this time they weren’t for babies, they were for hospice patients.  Yeah, I’m awesome.

Then I worked on an excel file all week at work and did about 13,000 cells of organization (Nicole and I talked about the process).  The best part was when they all got deleted.  Oh wait, that wasn’t the best part.  The best part was when I looked forward to the future where there are time machines and I can travel back to before I’d wasted 10 days on this project and said something to the effect of “Forget about this Excel spreadsheet.  I’m tackling World Peace™!” rather than waste my time on stupid book-related excel spreadsheets.

Not to end the blog post on a negative rant.  Let’s see, positive things.  Devin is going to Depaul in Chicago and I’m in love with him.  My stepmom survived her difficult triathlon in Hawaii, and in the process my parents had a nice vacation.  Despite a heavy workload this week, I am surviving.  Jason, Devin and I three-way voice skyped on Wednesday, and it was fun.  Summer is soon.

How’s that?

Have good dreams of John Brown.  On a boat.  And me being Harper’s Fairy and rewriting history.

-Rachael

P.S. I'm linking Mayberry about this, so maybe our teacher popularity will grow by one.  Maybe not.