Sara's Autistic History Report

HISTORY REPORT

2

(Sara walks to the front of the class to give her history report.)

Thank you everyone for being here. I know that most of you would rather be anywhere else, but thank you all the same. I am going to try to limit my report to the historical events and figures of the 14th through the 17th centuries, the time of the renaissance. It was considered an era of free thinking and global exploration. A time of scientific, philosophic, and artistic expression. Many historians have said it was the era where civilization went from the dark and into the light. I personally find this time in history fascinating with fascinating people. I also think it was a time of immense human suffering, injustice, and down right depravity.

The renaissance started in Florence, Italy after and during the Black Death. The Black Death, or plague, wiped out about 50 million people in the 14th century. As a point of comparison, just in the 14th century, the plague caused more deaths than the entire First World War (an estimated 40 million civilians and military died). The plague, however, lingered on for centuries like a fart in an elevator. When all is said and done, figures say that as many as 200 million people or more could have perished from the plague. As a point of comparison, mainly for my fellow classmates, more people have died of the plague then follow Kim Kardashian on Instagram. Kim only has around 150 million idiots following her. Incidentally, does anyone else find that ridiculous? That is more followers than the entire population of Russia! (Currently around 146.3 million). I told my therapist the other day that there are about 150 million people out there that need therapy more than me and then I started ranting about social media. He told me to take a deep breath, and focus.

Anyway, for days I could not get out of my head the amount of people had died from this one disease. Then I did some research and I realized how vulnerable we are and have been. If you have some time, just look at some of the statistics. In the 1980's AIDS made its appearance, and it has taken about 36 million lives. Cholera is said to have started somewhere in the 1800's and it has killed around 40 million people. The 1918 flu pandemic killed around 50 million people. The smallpox started around 1600's and has killed around 500 million people. Some experts say that up to 1 billion people have lost their lives to tuberculosis, but the granddaddy of them all seems to be malaria with a horrific number as high as 50 billion. 50 billion! We currently have about 8 billion people on the entire planet!

Malaria is the disease caused by the mosquito, the most annoying little fucker that has ever lived. Just try to think of anything more annoying than the mosquito. Could not do it, could you? The mosquito wins most annoying hands down. This little thing is responsible for 50 billion deaths. In the court of law he would be found guilty and given the death sentence for crimes against humanity. It has been living among us for over 500,000 years. I read one article, I don't remember were, that said that the dinosaur's were already facing extinction because of the mosquito. The asteroid is responsible for the dinosaur's death but it could have been the mosquito. Talk about the David and Goliath scenario!

Have any of you read the journals of Lewis and Clark? If you haven't, you should. Those two nut jobs are hilarious. They faced all sorts of dangers and perilous situations, and do you know what their most common complaint was? That's right, you guessed it, the fucking mosquito, bitches. Their diaries are riddled with different entries just bitching about mosquitoes. It was like the mosquitoes were just fucking with them on purpose.

They even called the mosquitoes their mortal enemy. Here is something I found curious but not really relevant; In their journals you see the word mosquito spelled 26 different ways, but never once did they spell mosquito correctly. I never actually read the entire Lewis and Clark journal; but, apparently, some guy on the internet did, and he said he counted, so it's got to be true. I obsessed over that for about a day. I even went to one of the math teachers to see what the odds where that something like that could happen. He told me he was busy and did not have time to address the issue. I mean, don't you think, just by luck, they would have spelled it right sooner or later?