Yesterday, Kat�s English class got into a discussion of what period of history they would go back to and live in if they could. The underlying assumption seemed to be that they could pick both when and where. One boy (and on these things it usually is a boy) wanted to go back to the French Revolution. He thought he wouldn�t mind being guillotined if he could have that much excitement. Yuck. I can live without that excitement. One girl wanted to go back to a particular part of the middle ages because she thought the clothing was cool. When pressed, she indicated that she wasn�t really that shallow; she wanted that time period because she also thought the hair styles were cool.

Kat, who just finished a project for social studies on Eleanor of Aquitaine, had the answer that the girls in the class later adopted. Assuming that Eleanor of Aquitaine really was part of the courts of love (and there is some historic doubt), she wanted to go back to that period and be a woman in the courts of love. She wanted to be part of a world where women were considered superior to men and men were supposed to fall passionately in love with a woman of higher rank, suffer for his love, and perform noble deeds and services in exchange for hopes of the occasional tokens of her esteem (or, as some critics suggest, since the woman was usually a married woman, adultery.) She wants poetry written to her.

Of course she does. She�s fourteen and, while less romantic than some, she�s still dewy-eyed. It�s left to old fogeys like me to say, �Well, what did these women do with the rest of their time? Are you really willing to trade some freedom to control your own destiny for a bit of romantic fluff like poetry?�

All of which got me thinking about what period of history I would chose if I had to chose. (My cautious nature initially says, �None of the above. I�ll stay with what I know, thank you very much.�) My first impulse is to stick with a decade of which I have some experience. I know a lot of people who long for the 1950s, or what they think the 1950s were like, but I�ve never really heard my parents long with affection for that period of time and I figure they�d know. While I have some memories of the fifties, they are rather family-centered as I was not old enough to have much feel for the outside world. I�m enough like my mother that if she didn�t think those were the golden years I can relatively safely assume I wouldn�t either.

I lived through the 1960s. I�m not doing that again. While many others my age and many of those just a bit older remember those years in a haze of idealism, peace and love, I mainly remember the rage on the streets. The Detroit riots, the assassinations, and the angry, sometimes violent demonstrations are all seared into my brain.

So I guess I�m going to have to make a leap. I�d prefer a time and place free of war. Even our more recent, relatively bloodless wars (at least on our side) have not made me long for that type of �unity.� I feel no need of such challenges to prove who I am and what I�m made of. While I recognize that most of the times I have available put much greater restrictions on women than I would be comfortable operating in, I think I�d at least have to look for times that allow for some routes the drive and passion that are very much a part of me could take. Perhaps I�d like to be one of the abolitionists of the nineteen century�although I�d have to be willing to change my religion to make that one work and I�m not willing to do that.

I long ago realized that questions like this one create a mirror. The answers reflect the nature of the person answering more than they say anything about place and time. Kat�s answer says she is fourteen and likes the idea of sexual power. Mine says that I am a person who, no matter how things are going now, figures they could be worse somewhere else. All of which brings us back to Mr. Philately�s recurrent question: �Are you the most optimistic pessimist I know or the most pessimistic optimist?� The only answer to that question is �yes.�

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