tale 41 the good old times
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The good old times
Once upon a time in the future, there was a child
monkey who liked listening to the elders talking about the good old times.
These narrations sounded interesting and adventurous but there was always a
sour aftertaste about nowadays youth not knowing anything, not being hard
enough, good enough and too oblivious. He respected the elders but always
felt that there was something about their descriptions, which didn’t fit.
He was very interested in science and when he had
grown up, he invented a time machine. “Now, I will visit those fabulous ‘good
old times’,” he told himself and set out for big voyage into the past.
First, he went very far to the beginning because
he thought, “if the times of my elders were fabulous, then the times before
must have been even better.” So he turned the wheel on his time machine many
thousand years back to get right to the beginning.
When he opened the door of the cabin and stuck
his head out, a banana peel landed on his head. He was rather surprised and
looked around to find out who had greeted him that strange way. He couldn’t
see anybody and then heard some noise coming from the tree above him. There,
he saw a big monkey with a grinning face preparing to shit on him. He could
just jump aside and then noticed others of this kind. They were just getting
ready to throw all kind of fruit, nuts and sticks on him. While he was
running back to his cabin, he thought, “these monkeys of the good old times
are not very friendly. I will try a period a bit more advanced.”
The second place seemed to be much better. A
peaceful village with some campfires lay before him on the shore of a smaller
river, children playing hide and seek and females preparing food. He was
hungry anyway and the smell of roasted meat tickled his nose. When the
inhabitants noticed him, they fell to the ground in front of him and kissed
his feet. Having surrounded him, they led him to centre of the settlement.
After some hours, the males arrived with hunted deer and fish. The evening
was closed with dancing around the fire. He was shown a kind of palm leaf hut
and soon fell asleep.
The next morning’s waking up wasn’t as funny as
the evening because he found himself bound on hand and feet. Some males
appeared to inspect his arms, thighs and behind and were hotly debating in a
language he couldn’t understand. At night a big fire was laid in the centre
of the settlement and wild dance and music began.
Suddenly, he heard a noise at the back of his
palm leaf hut. It was the little female who had looked at him with so lovely
eyes the day before. She had a knife in her hand. First, he was shocked but
then she cut his shackles and led him out of the village to his cabin. He was
very happy having been saved and wanted to say something to the lovely female
but she had disappeared.
The third place was much more cultivated with
fields of crops and wheat. On the far horizon, he could discern some
pyramids. From history lesson, he knew that he should be in Egypt now and was
rather pleased thinking that those people there at least wouldn’t shit on him
or make him their evening lunch.
But he didn’t go too far from his cabin when a
monkey with a whip came up to him and shouted something in a strange
language, which our hero couldn’t understand. And as he didn’t move because
he didn’t know what the other wanted, the monkey used his whip and chased him
to the next settlement. There he had to work very hard, first on the fields
and then to build a pyramid.
One day, the pharaoh died and he was told that he
had the honour to carry the son of gods into his grave and serve him in the
other world. Our hero knew what that meant and fled to his cabin.
“Maybe, it’s better in more modern times,” he
thought and moved the time wheel a bit forward.
The fourth place led him into a crowded city with
aqueducts and public baths. “Great,” he thought, “I love bathing and hygiene.
However, as he went on in the streets, he was arrested by some soldiers
because they thought he was a Jew. “I’m a Christian,” he told them. “Nero is
our god and we don’t know anything about Chr… or how you call them,” they
replied. “Then, our history books must be wrong,” he speculated. But by then,
he had been taken to the circus Maximus and found himself chased by a lion.
One of the female patricians liked his look and asked Nero to give him to her
as a house pet.
Now, where should he go next? He was rather fed
up with all the prehistoric and antique times; he wanted something much
closer to his.
When he got out of his cabin the fifth time, there
was a big church in front of him, a crowd of people on a market place
offering their goods and dwarves demonstrating acrobatic tricks.
This time, he had to learn not to say too much,
especially not about science because they nearly burnt him as a sorcerer on
the pyre when he declared that the Earth was circling around the sun. “Why
should god put his best work, humankind, on the edge of all his creation?”
they asked him, “next time you will tell us that the world wasn’t created by
god, or even that there is no god.”
He worked for a farmer and was carrying the
harvest. He had to cross a small bridge on his way from the fields to the
village. Once, when he had nearly crossed over this water, the landlord came
by on horse and of course expected all his subjects to jump out of his way
when he went somewhere. However, the bridge was to narrow and our hero with
his load on his back wouldn’t have had the possibility to turn around, go
back and let the noble pass first. Therefore, he did the last steps to other side
of the bridge and then stepped aside. The landlord in his arrogant way
disliked this behaviour, called his men, had our hero bound on a tree and
beaten with a whip.
Another time, when he was in love with a young
female, she told him that if he married her, the night of the wedding, she
would try to get some cows from the noble landlord. He learned that the first
night, the bride belonged to the landlord and if she did well and pleased him
enough, she could ask for a favour, which could mean some cows for the start
of the new household. Of course, the nobleman would enjoy her favours further
on as well. Honestly said, that was a bit too much for our hero. Those were
the expectancies of the good old Christian times: “Don’t covet your
neighbour’s wife!”
His sixth place was in a palace of one of the
kings at some time in the age of shooting weapons. Our hero was just serving
food and drink to the king of banana land and the lord of the coconut empire
when he saw them quarrelling. “I will send my armies and destroy your
country,” said the banana king. “My armies will devastate your cities,” the
coconut king shouted back. Our hero couldn't help but commented, “Why don’t
you fight among yourselves instead of sending your soldiers? That’s faster
and spares your subjects.” They looked at him first surprised and then with
disdain. Our hero knew that he had just enraged them against himself and
thought it wiser to travel to another maybe more peaceful age.
The seventh place seemed to be a bit more modern
and monkeys travelled around the whole planet. There was an exchange of
culture and arts and achievements of technic made their life easier. They had
just replaced their kings by democratically elected governments but then, the
question came up how to assure the loyalty of the inhabitants. Now their
soldiers didn’t take an oath on a king anymore but on their tribe or country.
So they invented nationalism. The monkeys with big ears thought that they
were better than those with big noses. The beginning of racism.
His eighth adventure, females finally got the
right to vote but preferred to have a strong man as head of state because
they still needed the feeling of a strong man defending them and elected a
dictator.
When he came home in the end, he was rather disillusioned.
He continued to greet the old when he met them on the street but did not stop
to talk to them because he was not interested in their lies anymore. “But
were these really just lies?” he asked himself.
He finally had grown old and was a grandfather
himself when his grandchild asked him to talk about his experiences and the
good old times.
First, not a single word left his mouth. He felt
he was not ready to explain the problem of the past. “You feel young and
strong and the world is yours, don’t you?” he asked his grandchild, “that was
the time when I went to find out about the past.” He stopped for a moment
because he was not quite sure whether his grandchild understood his
explanations. “And when you get old one day, your grandchild will ask you to
talk about the good old times. But then, don’t get nostalgic! Tell your
grandchildren how the circumstances have changed within the long period of
your life to make your progenies understand that things move forward,
hopefully for the better!”
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Dienstag, 31. März 2020
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