Let's flash forward to modern day, at the start of the second decade of the twenty-first century:
The clean and open classroom with the large open windows and the several slowly-turning ceiling fans contained a couple dozen notably bright-eyed young students attentively seated at their desks. They had just done their flag salute, just as millions of their fellow American students would do that day, and now their day would proceed with focus on the special meaning of the particular day’s history.
The teacher, a tribal Cherokee woman, surveyed her students with a fierce grin. The broad, square set of her shoulders indicated physical strength to go with her mental acuity and personal presence. Adsila Bell loved her students, and this was reciprocated without hesitation. She also held them strictly accountable for their behavior, and they paid close attention to her directions. They had had her as their teacher for several years now, and her radiance when pleased with an action or answer was ample incentive to succeed. (They did of course have appreciation of the intrinsic value of their achievements, but never mind that.)
One of her students, a third grade boy named Patrice, glanced again at the classroom’s national flag and smiled. He loved the flag. He loved his country. He enjoyed the rippling of the fabric and how eighty tiny white stars spilled over a dark blue square, each representing a part of his nation.
Patrice knew that the stars were not individually assigned to each state, but, he still liked to think that his home state, the state of Katanga was represented by the one on the top left of the square, standing proudly as leader of this small galaxy of stars whose states were linked to each other across oceans.
Patrice then glanced at his home state Katanga’s flag: It was a rendering of an old bull elephant. It was not just any elephant, of course! This elephant, old and blinded by terrible injury, was Robert E. Lee’s elephant, and, as Patrice and many others believed, the savior of Katanga and the other half-dozen states of America that proudly girdled the once tyrannized region of Central Africa.
Last month, Patrice had very proudly been the lead in his classroom’s play depicting the events in which the famous officer’s elephant became the inadvertent liberator of his land and people. Patrice himself had worn the white wig and beard portraying the heroic Lee, a venerable man who was very limber and surprisingly strong thanks to regular exercises including sparring with quarter-staff and sword, and the very involving process of caring for his old cavalry beasts on his plantation.
The scene shown on stage depicted Lee’s favorite old elephant –North Star, named for his majestic dignity and tremendous height—painted on a black screen representing the New Orleans night sky. Patrice and several of his classmates loudly depicted the events that turned North Star into a catalyst for freedom.
Patrice’s best friend, Felix, played the role of the arch-villain Thibault Meuse, attempting to combine constant sneering malevolence with as many other negative qualities as he could remember.
At the height of the scene, Felix’s foam rubber “quarter-staff” flew from his hands, hitting North Star in the face. (Despite rehearsal after rehearsal, not many expected the simulated weapon to actually strike the painted eye precisely.) Patrice then assumed a pose of absolute shock and rage, raised his hands, and bellowed:
“You dare to blind my North Star! You maim my beloved beast! Darn you, darn you to heck!”
It was one of the very, very rare occasions an American student could be permitted to swear in the view of supervising adults.
Now came the fun part, as Patrice did his best to “thrash” Felix without actually hurting him, a task made easier by the fact that his foam rubber prop would have nowhere near the dreadful impact of a real hardwood quarterstaff as wielded by a furious military veteran.
Felix managed to sneer and scowl and slowly fall concurrently and gave as good a death scene for Thibault Meuse as any American third grader ever had.
