I’ve been sitting for four hours in a very boring sociology class where the teacher drones on for the duration like Ben Stein. The only saving grace is that the information he is trying to convey is for the most part interesting to me. I’ve always had an interest in sociology since it is in essence the study of human society. I’ve always questioned things that were widely accepted by all around me to be true. As a child I sat on a church pew with my aunt and I clearly remember thinking how odd it was to have grown adults act so assumingly. I recall wondering how they knew for sure that everything the pastor was saying was true. My aunt shushed me and whispered that the Bible was the word of God, and everything in that book was true. I was vexed and suspicious as I looked down at the bible in the back of the pew. I picked it up and opened the cover, I was sorely disappointed to see that “God” didn’t publish the bible I was holding, but instead it was some company in Pennsylvania that had published the book.

I know now why my mother used to answer most of my questions about life with one simple answer. “Look it up.” She would say. I know because I have had the same problems trying to answer my own daughter’s impossible questions. But since that day in the church I’ve been skeptical about books and their credibility. In school we teach our children that what ever the book says is concrete and that is just the way of things. Have you ever sat and thought about what you were reading and accepting as truth. How do we know that the person who wrote the books we have sculpted our society around were not raving mad men? It’s always been one of those questions I’ve wondered in a class room setting. And again as I sit in my sociology class flipping through a book that was written by another simple human, but is supposed to be taken as the way society is. Shouldn’t we just take this as the way the author sees society? Again as the teacher and my aunt assume that everything in this book is true, I sit and ponder a question. What could I write that others would use to shape their reality? What a terrible and wonderful thought…..