![]() who are these people anyway One of my favorite past-times is to imagine back stories for the people I see at coffee shops, parks, airports, you name it. I'm always speculating about their personal lives, the secrets they keep, their ambitions--either thwarted or realized. I also like to imagine people in completely different historical contexts. I never make them actual known historical figures, but I might connect them with someone famous. For example, I often look at my eighteen-year old students as World War I soldiers, or the people sipping wine as Macedonians, or the woman strolling down the street as a Druid priestess (not really sure what that looks like though) or the person who cut me off a French aristocrat (sorry about your impending beheading...) One of my friends for sure would be a disguised Han warrior, making tea for her family, then sneaking off to fight the Huns. (Or am I thinking of Mulan?) Another friend would have been an early suffragette, and still another, a village chieftain. A professor I know would have been an Abbott, living a scholarly life in a monastery. And so on. I always imagine my husband as a Viking ship-maker or one of Charlemagne's armor-makers. I wouldn't have met him, unfortunately, as I'd have been a servant in some great English manor or maybe teaching in a one-room schoolhouse on the prairie. Or taking bribes as a Chicago gumshoe. Something like that. A girl can dream. It's fun to speculate what we might have been like 50, 100, 1000, 2000, 10000 years ago! (Cave-man anyone?) Or for that matter, if we lived 5000 years in the future. What about you? How would you imagine yourself in a different time period?
9 Comments
Matt
6/28/2012 01:47:32 pm
I'd like to envision myself as an early 1900s athlete. Perhaps a leather-helmeted football player or a baseball player (in super fast motion, like the old news reels). More likely, though, I'd be a fireman with an awesome handlebar mustache.
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Mary Lesniak
6/29/2012 04:26:57 am
I always envisioned myself as running a safe house in the civil war, or as a nurse during wartime. Of course, there is Catherine the Great or someone for the royal house of Romanov. If I get bored with that I'd love to be a serving wench in an English pub in a small town in the 18th century.
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Mary Lesniak
6/29/2012 08:00:02 am
I'm having a hard time picturing Matt with a handlebar mustache. I think he should grow one this summer! I'll pick up the mustache wax when it gets long enough. Grow Matt, grow!
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bekerys
6/29/2012 09:01:27 pm
300 or so years from now, I would be chief science officer of one of our many space colonies. Or, in an alternate universe where magic is real, I would be a middling sorcerer(ess) who could make herself disappear for all sorts of mischief and mayhem....who was that who stole the secret to the Prince's Plan of Succession?
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Shyanmei
6/30/2012 07:52:39 am
A fun hobby. Once you get to know the person, have you found your speculations fit their personality?
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Susanna CalkinsHistorian. Mystery writer. Researcher. Teacher. Occasional blogger. Categories
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