"Did this really happen?"

After two weeks of talking about mythological gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters, quests and love stories, my classes were listening to (tolerating?) my summary of the Trojan War before we began reading The Odyssey. I'd come to the part of the story where an arrow fired by Paris was guided by the god Apollo directly into the only vulnerable spot on the otherwise immortal body of Achilles: his heel. "Although the rest of his body was immortal," I said to the class, "he died from the wound." I was about to launch into the usual rap about our modern use of the phrase Achilles heel to mean any particular weakness in an otherwise powerful person, when Jonny Jabberjaw piped up: "How could you die from getting shot in the heel?! That's stupid!" And the usual chaos ensued: Nods (and shouts) of agreement from those looking to find any way to distract me from the rest of my captivating lecture.

It's not the first time I've been faced with such literary skepticism, but I think my response grows progressively more sarcastic: "They're myths, Jabberjaw! Myths! Why are you looking for logical outcomes?! Do you think all the stuff in Batman is perfectly logical? No, but you went to see that movie 15 times! Why can't we just assume, for the sake of argument, that in 3200 B.C. they did not have the means to stop the bleeding caused by severing the Achilles tendon? (Which reminds me: Do you know why they call it the Achilles tendon, genius?!) Or maybe there was no effective antibiotic during the Trojan War and Achilles died of a subsequent infection. Would that satisfy your oh-so-critical-and-probing mind? Gee, now that I think of it, the whole Harry Potter series is stupid, too. There aren't really any wizards roaming around! And this Twilight series? Vampires? C'mon! How can we be uplifted or entertained by anything that isn't perfectly logical?! Thanks for ruining it for all of us."

By the end of my tirade, the class was chuckling in nervous apprehension, and Jonny was content to have driven me off-topic to such a degree that I couldn't effectively return to my tale. He's smarter than he looks...or so I thought at the time.

A couple days later, during a class conversation about another mythological topic, I said something about how the gods and goddesses frequently intervened in the lives of mortals. I jokingly threw in this addition: "Not at all like now. These days the gods leave us alone most of the time." Almost on cue, Jonny Jabberjaw had his hand up even though he didn't wait to be called on before he spoke: "Are these stories true? Did this stuff really happen?" It's the kind of thing a classic Smart-A would say, but Jonny's tone was, for once, genuine. He was asking a serious question. He really didn't know for sure if the myths were true stories or not. He had some image in his head of an ancient writer making historical notes as he watched Hercules slay the Hydra and then passing that factual story on to history. Really? I wanted to say. Really? You think this might be factual? The monsters? The magic? All that stuff is...true?

I don't want to start a religious war over the fact that this is exactly what the ancient Greeks believed or the fact that most modern religions require a certain degree of similar faith in things that can't be strictly proved, but I am pretty sure that we can all agree that most of the stuff in Greek mythology is just that: mythology, made up, fictitious, just stories. And yet Jabberjaw wasn't sure. Even at 15 years of age, and even though he is capable of criticizing the impossibility of being killed by a wound to the heel, Jonny Jabberjaw thinks the myths might be facts. This scares me a bit.

I remember my Grandmother often wondering, "What's wrong with this new generation? Where are their values? Where are their morals?" She always got along just fine with me, but she was inordinately worried about the world in which I was to grow up. I've never felt the way she did...until now. What's wrong with this new generation? Where are their critical thinking skills? Where is their ability to distinguish the real world from fiction?

Of course I know that not everyone is a Jonny Jabberjaw, and I am aware that maybe Jonny will outgrow his (learned? practiced?) foolishness, but still....