A flip of the looking glass…

Note: This is a continuation of a story previously shared, found here. Basic summation, should you need one: Our two characters, one younger, one considerably older, are in the midst of exploring a storage room that no one had breached since poodle skirts were all the rage. In that prior scene, the story had just been interrupted by the writer (that would be me) breaking the Fourth Wall in an apparently non-appreciated manner. And here we go…

  Garamonda, post-reflection and post-intervention from the somewhat annoying editor who clearly had power issues, decided she should woman-up and embrace the moment. She took a step forward, paused, took another step, and then stopped. She looked at Monty. “I don’t even know where to start. There are so many boxes.”

  Monty smiled back at her, letting his crusty exterior slide away for a moment. (Truth be told, many folks with hard exteriors only have such because they are hiding their soft centers, a defense mechanism reinforced over the years because that softness has been abused by others in their past. Other truth told? Some people are just incorrigible assholes who are beyond redemption. Write them off and move on. Monty was the gooey kind, end of day.) “It’s okay. We don’t have a plan yet. Just pick one and see what’s inside.”

  Garamonda pivoted her head back to the vast array of options, scrunched her face a bit in concentration, then made her way to a particular stack, a choice based on nothing other than the faint, budding sensation that she might enjoy doing this. She instinctively shoved aside the box at the pinnacle of the pile. The negated carton tumbled to the floor, popped open, and released another small, vague creature that raced away. Said racer was most likely intent on catching up with the first escapee from the chamber and making it clear that he or she was not impressed with the abandonment. (“Dude, you never leave a scavenging comrade behind. We learned that in basic training. What is wrong with you?” First Escapee: “Dudette, I’m a Republican. We leave everybody behind. Especially the females.”)

  Garamonda grimaced. “I don’t know if I can take much more of the wildlife. We didn’t have nature centers where I grew up. Just crime and poverty and lots of anxiety and little opportunity. If somebody or something was running, you ran the other way.”

  Monty’s gooiness gurgled. “Oh, I had no idea. And where was this?”

  Garamonda, seeing a chance and taking it, because she had her own self-created exterior, didn’t miss a beat. “Beverly Hills.”

  Monty’s goo gelled. “Now see, I was trying to be nice to you and-”

  Garamonda smiled. “I’m just kidding. I was raised on the north side of Tulsa. It was not a happy place, at least not then. I’m assuming that it still isn’t. Because it’s Oklahoma, where progress is against the law. But I haven’t been there in a while.”

  Monty was curious. “How did you end up here at the Smithsonian, in Washington?”

  Garamonda did not smile. “Because I ran until I was far enough away that I couldn’t smell Oklahoma on me anymore.”

  Monty had no idea what to say at that point, but he fully understood, as he had done his own running from things that were not right, long ago. For now, he chose diversion. “I’d like to hear more about that, but maybe later. For now, let’s see what’s in the box you clearly want to open.” (Translation: “I suddenly have a completely different interpretation of what is you, but I need some time to make sure I choose the right words, because the wrong words in our shared pasts still hurt, still linger. I don’t want to be that wrong word.”)

  Garamonda shoved another box aside, with the subsequent tumbling of such not releasing anything that scurried. (Progress! Not Oklahoma!) She pulled a third box toward her, the box that spoke to her, one that was not moist, and she quickly ripped it open (the packing tape had disintegrated long ago, a mere wisp of former adhesion), and she waited to hear what it had to say.

  The box said “I have lots of photographs. Old ones, black and white, mostly, because that was the common thing when these images were captured. Would you like to see some of them?”

  Garamonda did. She pulled out a stack of the box-promised photos, just an upper layer of many more under. They felt surprisingly crisp in her hands, as if newly printed, negating the effects of time passages and the odd wetness of the other boxes and the racing rodents with ideological variances. She stared at the initial proffering on top of the excavated tree ring. “I think this is Roosevelt, doing something. Maybe in the White House? I think he’s sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.”

  Monty was instantly intrigued, in two ways. He went with the first, less-important angle. “Which Roosevelt?”

  “Franklin Delano. He still looks okay, so this must be before the war, or at least before you could see the horrors of the war in his face.”

  Monty now had a third avenue of interrogation, but he kept things in order by going with the second question that had popped into his mind. “How do you know these things? Do they still teach actual history in schools these days? I’m not being facetious, I just… well, there are a lot of conservative school boards in this country who are trying to whitewash what came before.”

  Garamonda turned to look at Monty, realizing something herself. “Do you really think we’re that simple? The youngest generation? Clueless about everything?”

  This was a sudden quag that mired Monty. How honest should one be, when asked an honest question, especially in a workplace environment where you don’t really know anyone to a deep degree, where a wrongly-taken honest answer can make things uncomfortable from that point forward? But Garamonda was being real, and Monty felt compelled to follow. “Well, I have to admit that so many young people can be so… self-focused. They seem to want everything they can get, right now, without putting in the work to actually earn the getting. That’s annoying to people who spent many years, many decades struggling to win the race while the young folks demand a trophy for the race without having actually run. Is that fair?”

  Garamonda smiled. “It’s fair, but it’s also a bit dismissive. What the older generations don’t understand is that our generation has had to deal with things they never did. Our experiences are not the same as theirs. And let’s start with the big one: the Internet. The impact from that is massive, and while you can rhapsodize about the time when everyone made their own choices, we don’t know that time. Yes, we can try to be independent, but we are constantly bombarded by algorithms and targeted-messaging and the unearned, massive power the Internet gives to ‘influencers’ who just happened to go viral one day and now they will never go away. It’s hard to ignore all that mess.”

  Monty knew his response wasn’t right but the words came out of his mouth before he could stop himself. “Then don’t use the Internet to make your own decisions.”

  Garamonda briefly looked like she could stab somebody, anybody, but then she regained control. “Do you not understand that everything we do is now online? Everything. In college, we got our assignments on our cellphones. We took tests on our laptops. I had some professors that never had a non-digital conversation with me, ever. And it keeps going. You apply for jobs online, you get interviewed online, you pay your bills online because many companies now charge you to send a physical statement.

  “We cannot avoid the Internet, but at the same time the Internet is a cesspool because far too many stupid people have access to a keyboard and a Wi-Fi signal. And that stupidity, because it’s endless and massive, bleeds into everything. Even the few remaining legitimate news sites are affected, because they allow ad-sponsored content. They need the revenue to maintain a profit, I get that. But it means that you can be reading a fact-verified piece on CNN about whatever, but right there on the same page is a link to an obviously bogus ‘news story’ that is not news and is not true.

  “And all of this mess, and you’re not going to like this part, is the result of something that happened a couple generations ago. In the 80s, as you should know, the Reagan Administration gutted the libel and slander laws, paving the way for fake-news organizations to spread lies without accountability. And that freedom to lie has increasingly exploded over the decades until we are now at the point where the younger generations don’t trust any ‘news’ that they see. In this environment, this distrust, why wouldn’t we try to find a new way to accomplish our life goals? The old way is broken because of what the older generations did, or, more importantly, did not do. We are the legacy of that inaction. We didn’t get here on our own.”

  Monty was stunned, in that startling way when folks suddenly realize that some of their preconceived perceptions are being legitimately refuted. If you’re a scampering rodent (political party affiliation should be obvious), fleeing the scene of your own bigoted and hate-based crime, you counter the refuting by buckling down on the refuter. If you’re a decent person, like Monty (gooey center!), you do your best to mind the gap, and so he did. “I’m not even sure what I should say at this point, because I’ve clearly already said some things that were triggering and probably ignorant, on my part. At the same time, can you understand why I might have said those things? Because I’m also the product of what came before me. History echoes.”

  Garamonda nodded. “Yes, I understand. And that’s all anybody wants, really, to be understood, regardless of the date on their birth certificate. We just have different windows on the world, different views. And no window is unworthy, as long as it’s not cracked with hate. So, there’s no need to say anything more. We can just keep looking at these old photos and try to understand the things that came before both of us. Sound good?”

  Monty also nodded, relieved that things had not become more than they should become. “Yes, let’s do that. What’s next in the stack?”

  Garamonda gently set the Resolute Roosevelt photo to the side, revealing the next entry in their mutual stirring of the past. “Oh, my. Well, this is a window that I don’t understand. I’m trying, but I’m not getting there.” She held up the image for Monty to review.

  It was a grainy snap of four women in a chorus line, in the midst of performing synchronized choreography that involved high-kicking, bow-bedecked footwear, frilly dresses, and the ominous fact that said women were sporting old-school gas masks on their heads.

  Monty was initially flummoxed, but then something faintly rang a bell way back in the long-dusty bits of his brain that stored his childhood memories. “Wait a minute, I’ve seen that before, somewhere. Flip it over and see if there’s any writing on the back.”

  Garamonda flipped, and then she quoted: “Chernobyl: The Musical, Windmill Theatre, London, January 1940.”

  To be continued…

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