Recently I heard from an early middle-aged mother with a 12-year-old daughter, who asked her mom to sign a permission slip for a school field trip.
So her mother said, “OK, Julie. I guess I can put my John Hancock on this form,” whereupon Julie replied, “Please, Mother: enough of the dirty jokes, OK?”
Here we see the power of oblivion.
Just in case anyone listening doesn’t know, John Hancock was a once-famous signer of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote with what was once called a “large hand,” so that King George could see his signature without needing his glasses.
John Hancock was a brave man. His signature was defiant and might have cost him his life as a traitor to the King. And for this, John Hancock used to be famous. But Julie, now 12, had never heard of him.
Let’s face it. None of us is as famous as John Hancock used to be. And in a hundred years no one will know or care that we even existed.
Well, you might say, what about legacy.com? Won’t someone be looking me up on that website? Well, you might be on that site, but good luck getting anyone to look you up there. You won’t have much to say about it anyhow.
In fact, the Internet makes things worse. Daniel Dennett, a philosopher, says that, with so much new information coming on line all the time, someday we may be able to remember the Beatles only by forgetting Berlioz.
By the way, who was Berlioz?
This is Tom McBride, and that’s my oblivious Perspective.
