Image by Baroco Ferison from Pixabay
“See, this stuff right here is why people walking around thinking they are God are so dumb, and don't know Earth is spinning and wobbling and going around the sun, which is going around the galaxy, which is going around the universe – they don't even know about it, much less doing the math to understand it, much less running it!”
Eleven-year-old Velma Trent was reading about Earth and the Solar System, and realizing things about humanity.
“Ain't it the truth,” her eight-year-old sister Gracie said. “And that's just outer space stuff – that doesn't even count not knowing what is going on right here on the planet.”
“Look, we can't even get into that,” Velma said. “Remember that time in New York where there was this guy in Central Park who was the emperor of Seneca Village?”
Gracie just shook her head.
“I woulda said to him then, 'bless your heart,' but I was six and Grandma is 66, so I figured I probably should let her and Mom say it later.”
“Yeah, because the hardest thing with all the messed up people in the world is not to get messed up with them,” Velma said. “That poor man … I mean, I get that his great-grandparents grew up there, and New York had no business tearing it down and trying to hide Black history while putting a park over it. That might mess anybody up, watching people walk around Central Park and not knowing what was done there and not caring. I think he figured he ought to be able to be emperor if other people got away with that, but he also was going to freeze in his shorts and robe at 28 degrees, talking about charging toll to all but Black people with no pockets in that robe to even put the money in.”
“But here is the thing,” Gracie said. “It's 2020, and that happened around 1890. When you are 130 years old, you are supposed to be wise.”
“Don't believe that,” Velma said, “and don't take our wise grandparents for granted. We can't say this at our ages to any adult, but there are a lot of old fools out there.”
“Ain't it the obvious truth,” Gracie said, “because Edwina.”
“Yeah, her other grandparents,” Velma said. “I don't get how it took them that long to realize that Col. Lee and Capt. Ludlow are not to be played with and they will kill over Edwina and the rest and have no problem. I don't see how they couldn't look at Edwina and tell that if they kept at it, she was going to grow up and come get them herself.”
“But see, this is what happens when you drink or take drugs for too long,” Gracie said. “You get in so much danger from all that that you don't even see it. Remember that time when one of our cousins walked through a whole plate glass window talking about 'I am the greatest'?”
“He neither floated like a butterfly nor got stung like a bee,” Velma said. “But, he was sober when he came out of the hospital a year later, so, that was good.”
“God does know what we need,” Gracie said. “Some people gotta go into spring and autumn and get those equal knocks to get straight, twice a year.”
“Equinox,” Velma said. “E-Q-U-I-N-O-X. Equinox – it means the days and the nights are each 12 hours, or equal lengths, and yeah, Earth stands straight up for both the spring and the autumn equinox.”
“The Earth needs it, and sometimes, so do the people,” Gracie said, “but you know, scientists gotta give stuff fancy names.”
“Well, ain't nobody else out here still using Latin, so, yeah,” Velma said.