The past is a foreign country

If you’ve done any traveling in your life, you see that folks do things differently in other lands. Some of the difference seems interesting and fun, but there are also differences that make you glad to skip back home, where folks do things “right” again. “What are those people thinking?” you think. “How can anybody behave like that and think it’s OK?”

That’s the beauty of traveling miles away to a foreign country. You can always come back home if you don’t like it.

But the past is a foreign country, too. They do things differently there.

I didn’t invent that notion. Those words were spoken by the British writer L. P. Hartley. And although old L. P. did a lot of things differently from me because, after all, he was British, he was right about that. The older you get, the more you come to realize that the past is a foreign country. At least, it’s a foreign country to young people who never lived there.

Of course, to an older person, it’s the present that feels foreign. But unlike international travel, the problem with time is that you can’t just hop on a plane and fly back “home” to the past, where things feel normal to you again. No, when it comes to time, with increasing age you become more and more an immigrant to the land of Now. And you know how folks feel about immigrants.

I thought about that the other day when I was flipping through a newspaper and saw a photo of that giant 26-foot-tall statue of Marilyn Monroe that once stood in Chicago. She strikes the iconic pose from her film “The Seven Year Itch” with her dress billowing up behind her. I liked the statue because… well, it’s a testament to the Windy City. Yeah, let’s go with that.

Anyway, the statue left Chicago and has been bouncing around the country over the past several years, and now it’s heading to Palm Springs, California — and not everybody there is happy with it.

Palm Springs Art Museum director Louis Grachos frowns when museum visitors, particularly schoolchildren, stare up at Marilyn’s backside and underwear as they stand between her legs. “What message does that send to our young people, our visitors and community to present a statue that objectifies women, is sexually charged and disrespectful?” he says.

And if you’re a citizen of The Now, I guess you’d have to agree with him.

But long, long ago, in a land far, far away — a land called “The Past” — you were willing to pay money to go see that film Marilyn was in, and when her dress blew up and she struggled to push it back down between her spread legs with a smile on her face, you were able to smile too and enjoy the moment without feeling disrespectful. If you went to the film with your wife and you glanced over at her, she was probably smiling, too.

And if Marilyn felt it disrespectful to her and other women that her billowing skirt was “sexually charged,” she didn’t do a very good job of expressing her outrage.

Because “The Past” is a foreign land where folks do things differently.

Of course, Marilyn isn’t the only “Past-ian” whose sculpture isn’t welcome anymore and is frowned upon by “Now-ians.”

Add to that list statues of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Christopher Columbus, Woodrow Wilson, Stephen Douglas, and even John Wayne. All across America, their statues are being torn down. They all seemed like fine people to honor with a statue way back then, but things change.

Because the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.

So catch up, old timers, because you’ve immigrated to “The Now.” We don’t do things like that here. If you don’t like it, go back to where you came from. Or, since you can’t do that, just shut up about it as we tear down those disrespectful statues, and keep quiet until there are none of you left.

Of course, the day will come when every “Now-ian” will have to face the same reckoning, because the Now won’t always be Now in the future. Someday, today’s Now will be as old and unwelcome as the Past is today, because that’s the way it works. And who can say how today’s Now will be judged by tomorrow’s Now?

How long will it be before Norman Rockwell paintings are torn from museum walls, because they show a very un-Now family smiling around a cooked Thanksgiving turkey, a testament to the primitive days when humans killed birds and ate them?

How long before all equestrian sculptures and artwork are banned because nobody ever asked the horse how he felt about being sat upon?

How long before you’re declared an unfit parent, because you gave your kids Matchbox Cars that encouraged them to grow up and drive carbon-spewing autos that sent global warming out of control?

How long before you’re shamed over walking your dog on a leash, a relic of a primitive time when pets were treated like slaves — collared, restrained and locked in pens — before they were fully emancipated as citizens with equal rights as humans?

When it happens, you’ll have to shut up and pretend that you never did any of those horrid things that once felt “normal.” You’ll be told that, even though everyone else did it, you should have known it was inherently wrong.

Because the Now always slides inexorably into the Past. And the Past is a foreign country: They do things differently there.

Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.

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