Are these people really real?

It doesn’t take much to grab my attention. There are lots of lists with which one can while away time, lose a crop, or let the dinner burn.

Just this afternoon I came across several websites which counted down from ten to one listing things like: ten ways to relieve stress, fight hate, kill yourself (surprise! Number one is smoking), … and so on. I’ll bet most of us have looked up the ten best dogs, the best vacation spots, and in reverse order the ten celebrities who look better without makeup. At the bottom of each of these lists is a list of other lists. That’s the reason I said you could lose a crop.

Tonight, I came across the one list that I couldn’t ignore. My CIQ (cultural intelligence quotient) would be at risk if I didn’t know these things. The come-on was: “Thirty well-known people who were not real people.” I didn’t want to be at a party when someone brought up Robin Hood. After studying the list, I now know that Robin Hood was just a made-up guy. I don’t blame the people of sixteenth century England for making him up. We all need to have some hope of getting rich … quick, especially if it means the rich guy up at the castle has less. The state Lottery takes care of that need for most of us.

I knew about some of the non-people on the list. I was not surprised that Carolyn Keene wasn’t real. She supposedly wrote all the Nancy Drew books, but was in reality a long list of ghost writers who used the name. I was suspicious of John Henry, the “steel drivin’ man.” After all, even in the song, he died. I’ll bet if there were a real John Henry, he’d grab onto that steam drill and go to work.

Of course, Helen of Troy wasn’t real. I know she was supposed to have lived a long time ago, but if they had seen Elizabeth Taylor, there would have been no contest. Speaking of Greeks bearing gifts, what about that Midas. We’d all like a piece of that golden touch but get real! There’s no golden touch … even on the stock exchange.

However, some of the people on the list were really PEOPLE. Believe me, I have no doubt there was a Jack the Ripper … I saw a movie about finding him. There really was a Shakespeare. Even if it was really a guy named Ed de Vere, Shakespeare did it. He wrote the plays. I know. I took a course on them in college, and no one said he wasn’t real. I have little doubt that there was a Pythagoras. He’s the man from the Pythagorean theorem. The people who put him on the list said he never wrote anything down, so he couldn’t be real. Not so. He’s bound to have, but he didn’t spell it out. He just drew boxes and wrote out a formula. Mrs. Baker, my algebra teacher, said so.

The most real person on the list was Zorro. I believe in the guy that wore that cape, jumped on to his horse from the top of the Alamo, and cut a big slash in fat guys’ pants. Have you seen Antonio Banderas? He’s real. I don’t care whose list he’s on.