Congratulations on Discovering That The Civil War is No Longer Going On!

You’ve spent your whole life on your parent’s farm in Kentucky, and it’s been great. You learned math from your grand pappy (two plus two is Jesus), biology from your grand mammy (we all evolved from Jesus) and how to read from your mom (The Velveteen Rabbit – she married in). You’ve had all the experiences that normal kids have had – butchering animals, killing outsiders and listening to Michael Jackson.

But following the recent death of Michael Jackson you’ll be heartbroken and you’ll realize that even if you live to be one hundred and thirty five like your grand pappy you’ll still die one day. The thought of experiencing nothing but this place will become terrifying to you. So you’ll pack up a napsack one day with a loaf of bread and a jar of beer, grab a shotgun and a handful of shells from one of your many sheds and venture out into the world, having drafted a series of rough pictures to explain to your illiterate elders why you left.

You’ll be shocked at how different the outside world is from the farm. It’ll be beyond amazing. They’ll have these moving pictures that tell stories and this stuff that covers up the terrible odors of your body. Also, they won’t all sleep surrounded by booby traps or pray to pictures of Jefferson Davis.

The biggest surprise, however, will come in the wealth of knowledge available to you. On the farm the only books around were the Bible, the Velveteen Rabbit and a small, respectable collection of Where’s Waldo books. But out here they’ll have stores and stores full of books. They’ll even have public buildings just full of tomes, waiting to be read. We believe they’re called “bibliotheques.”

You’ll be so excited that you’ll take a break from your exploring for almost a week to just sit and read in these places (the fact that the library has almost no security and that you can sleep there helps, too). You’ll pore over texts, learning of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Leopold Bloom. You’ll learn about swaths of history your grand pappy just plain forgot about and about places that you’d never dreamed of.

The outside world and this knowledge will be like drugs to you. You’ll never want to go back. But somewhere in those history books, given to you by an affable negro you’d assumed was some sort of house servant, you’ll discover that the Civil War ended nearly one hundred and fifty years ago and that the Confederacy will never require your services.

You’ll feel betrayed by your parents, who had raised you telling you that you’d one day take the fight all the way to Washington D.C. where you’d assassinate President Lincoln. You’ll feel even worse when you found out that Wilkes Booth, that crazy fucker, beat you to the punch.

You’ll raise your fist and shout to the sky that you’ll never return home. Then the librarian will shush you and you’ll go back to reading, learning about Reconstruction, which will be fascinating.

Congratulations on discovering that the civil war is no longer going on!