Chapter 1

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"Mr. Montrose, are you eating cookies in my class?"  I looked up.  My anthropology teacher was glaring at me from her desk.  We were watching a movie today so I brought snacks, what's wrong with that? A lot of things.  Brain why do you blatantly disrespect me in my time of need? 

"Umm...yes...would you like one?  They're Oreos!  Double stuff!" I offered.  Maybe if I shared she would be less uptight.  I looked around the rest of the class and they were all looking at me with excited eyes.  I looked at how many Oreos I had left.  "Nuh uh," I said to them all, "just Mrs. Abenaki." 

"Mr. Montrose, if you don't put those away right now I'll write you up and you won't be able to come on the field trip to the Natural History Museum on Friday," she said sternly, "instead you'll spend the day here in study hall writing a five page essay on the  kinship systems of a documented prehistoric culture." 

As you can imagine, my jaw dropped, practically hitting my chest, the half chewed Oreo cookie in my mouth fell onto my desk much to the disgust of the prissy girl sitting next to me.  But what the hell;  a) I didn't want to miss this field trip, it was like a whole day away from school and all my other subjects, and,  b) the whatship systems of who?  How could I write an essay on something I didn't even know existed?  Once the synapses in my brain started connecting again I quickly cleaned up my spewed chewed up cookie, shoved everything into my backpack, closed it up, sat up straight, gave Mrs. Abenaki my best "charm the pants off you" smile and kicked the ankle of the prissy girl next to me who was muttering and rolling her eyes. 

"I'm sorry Mrs. Abenaki, I'm good now."  She smiled and turned the movie back on. It was a documentary on a dig in 2005 in Germany where a stone age fossils were discovered that showed evidence of family, community and hierarchy.   

 When the movie ended, Mrs. Abenaki turned on the lights and it looked like she woke up half the class.  I have to admit, I kind of found this stuff interesting.  I'd rather this subject than English, Math or Chemistry. 

 "Can anybody tell me what sort of hierarchy was evidenced by the findings at this dig?" Mrs. Abenaki called out.  Everyone looked down or hid behind the kid in front of them.  Sheesh, I may have been eating Oreos, but at least I was paying attention.  I raised my hand, maybe I could get back in Mrs. Abanaki's good graces. 

"Mr. Montrose?"  

 "Well...in this dig they found bones and utensils of a large number of people...cavemen...whatever you want to call them, living together.  There were designated areas where they found what appeared to be cooking utensils and other areas where there were digging and foraging implements and then other locations of stored hunting tools.  It looked like they lived in the large cave together during colder months and outside the caves in smaller groups in, like summer.  By the way they found the bones that were buried outside the settlement which they assumed was like their graveyard, the dwellers lived in family groups within a kind of...um, I guess community.  The families were buried with the mother and father facing each other and then any kids who died were nestled in between.  But some of the bones were either two males or two females and they assumed they were like a father and adult son or a mother and adult daughter...but couldn't they have been like gay lovers?"  The whole class erupted in laughter, but I was being serious.  Why do they assume that there wouldn't have been gay people in pre-historic times.  I glared around the room. 

 "Quiet down class!" Mrs. Abenaki yelled.  "Mr. Montrose has a good point, it's quite an assumption that homosexuality only exists in modern day.  But what evidence was there of a hierarchy, was there one leader?  Was leadership based like it is today on a vote by the populace?" 

My current nemesis, the stupid football jock Phil Adams raised his hand, "the leader was the biggest and the strongest guy.  The one who could kick the most ass of course," he quipped.   

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