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Historical Humor
Our first morning on Saint Maarten, I was befriended by two little girls. They wanted to hold my hands and walk the beach with me. They skipped along and giggled like 5- and 7-year-old girls do. They seemed captivated by me. Perhaps it was my white hair. I was fascinated with their hair, too, dozens of teeny-weeny braids and nothing holding them, just sticking out. Their bare feet pounded the sand and shells. They ran up and down the boardwalk like they had running shoes on their feet. I did, but still limped over the sea shells, and I can’t walk in sand. They wanted me to come with them and dragged me by the hands. We walked to the end of the boardwalk where there were twelve bubbling fountains shooting up from the walk. Children were playing in them. The girls tried to pull me in. “Come,” one said, “It is fun. Do like this way!” She straddled the bubbling water. The second girl covered her mouth and giggled, then informed me, “You can tickle your tee tee.”
That was the first thing that made me laugh. The next was an American woman from Miami on one of the excursions. Someone asked the guide what the white bird along the road was called, and the guide told her it was an egret. Ms. Miami, said to no one in particular, “That’s not an egret. I’m from Florida and we have everything. Egrets are much bigger.” It was an egret. That same woman a couple days later told another excursion guide, “That isn’t wild ginger. I’m from Florida and I know my plants.” It was wild ginger.
We learned that Christopher Columbus “discovered” all the islands of the Lesser Antilles, among others. St. Kitts (Christopher) he named after himself. However, there’s no historical documentation that he ever set foot on any of these islands. Historians think he sailed by, and decided, “That’s a nice little island. I’ll take it for Spain. And that one, too. The Queen will like it. Write it down!” The funny thing is, the islands had already been discovered. They weren’t his to “give!” They were already inhabited by three very different tribes of native Indians! (A familiar story, right?)
The best historical hysteria was the story on Saint Kitts about Sam Jeffreson. He was Thomas Jefferson’s great-great grandfather. He’s buried on Saint Kitts, and is somewhat of a legendary hero. On different shore excursions we’d learned about the three tribes of natives who first lived here. The Caribs, war-like and cannibals, were finally the last left, for obvious reasons. But they apparently liked Sam Jeffreson and had him to dinner rather than for dinner. When the slave hunters started showing up from Africa, Sam Jeffreson figured out what they were up to, so he gathered up all the Caribs and took them to another island and hid them so they wouldn’t become slaves, thus saving the Caribs whose descendants still live there in freedom today. How’s that for a bit of historical irony? And the world just got smaller, right? The woman from Miami pointed out they misspelled Sam’s name. She knows it’s not spelled like that in Florida.