The Dreaming: Dark Star (Book 5)

Old Shalon's story, part 2

Blue Jay squeezed my shoulder, his arm still wrapped around me. To anyone else it might look like he was trying to keep me warm, but I knew the truth.

"My name is Shalon. I was born Shalon Lee Ann Sims in 1977. That makes me probably the oldest person here. I looked around. People were nodding. "That makes me eighty-seven years old."

I saw someone writing – was she taking notes? I remembered Blue Jay saying that this was about recording history, and felt a surge of emotion—would I be remembered after I died? Would these people remember me?

"I..." I began again, stumbling. "They tell me that I was born in a hospital in the Crowsnest Valley, across from a field where the last wild buffalo in North America lived. I don't know if that's true, but that's what they tell me. When I was born, my mother died. She died giving birth to me. But the doctors managed to bring her back. But she was dead for a good five minutes. Many years later, she told me that when she died, there were people waiting there to greet her, and she felt more peace and love than she'd ever felt before."

"Family, some of whom she'd never even met, were there to welcome her, but at some point, they began to tell her that she needed to go back. Back to her body. She needed to come and take care of me."

Some people in the audience were nodding.

"My mom told me that she didn't want to come back, but she came back for me. She came back, and ever since that experience, she was never afraid of dying again."

I thought about what to share next.... And thought about my mom, which made me tear up a little bit.

"I grew up poor, which was still rich compared to how you kids are growing up today." I looked around. "Poor back then meant you didn't have the right clothes made by the right people. I still had clothes, just not the ones that the rich kids had. And I brought my food to school, instead of buying it at the cafeteria....." I could see that I was losing them. Speed it up, I thought.

"Back then, we all went to school. All the kids your age would be in school every day, all day long. Except the weekends. School was so organized and orderly, compared to your lives. There would be one thousand kids crammed into a building, and everyone would do what they were told. Each day at school, you had five or six different classes. You would learn different subjects: math, science, English, art, social studies, and lots of other things.

I looked around. People were nodding. The children were wide-eyed. "Who here knows how to read?"

Almost no one but the adults put up their hands. I had a pang of guilt as I thought about how proud Michael would have been, one of the only children here who knew how to read.

"Well, back then, almost everyone knew how to read. School was basically reading and writing all day long. From the age of five until the age of eighteen. Back then, most kids hated school."

I looked around, and saw the kids were listening. "Who here wishes they could go to school?"

Almost every hand shot up as I said this, and suddenly, I had this lightbulb moment, and I knew what I was going to do here in this village, and I knew what I was going to talk about tonight. I wanted to get these kids learning.

"Well, I'll tell you. School is not always fun. You would probably hate it."

A young kid stood up—"No, we wouldn't!" he yelled. And another, older kid, pulled him down and shushed him.

"Well, back then, most kids hated school," I repeated. "Me, I loved it, but most kids absolutely hated it."

Another kid said, "Well, back then, people were stupid, or we wouldn't be how we like now, right?" an older kid said with a grammar that made me grimace.