Look it up in your history books. You'll see the disclaimer saying that I don't own any X-Men Evolution characters. Here's another silly fic inspired by another silly e-mail I read. Who said fan fiction couldn't be educational?
Those Who Don't Remember History
"George Bernard Shaw said it well," Hank sighed as he entered the school library. "To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching."
"Whoo Hoo!" Tabitha danced around on top of one of the tables with Amara. "Shake that thing!" Several other students were dancing around as well. Kurt was eating a pizza. Ray and Roberto were throwing paper airplanes at each other. And Rahne was running around holding Sam's book bag, teasing him.
"George Bernard Shaw obviously never taught high school," Hank groaned.
"Rahne! Give it baaaaccck!" Sam tripped and accidentally activated his powers. He crashed into a wall.
"All right people! Knock it off!" Hank shouted. "Stop fooling around while we still have some walls left! Kurt! Put the pizza away! Ladies get off the table! Ray do not even think about charging up the paper clip nose on that paper airplane! Jamie the library computers are for school work only!"
"This is school work," Jamie said. "This e-mail is all about how different things were a hundred years ago."
"Wow! That is so cool! Let me see!" The students crowded around the computer.
"Why is it when I try to educate you about the past, your attention span dwindles to the size of a microscopic bacteria and your eyes glaze over like a dead fish's?" Hank gave them a look. "But the second some over sent e-mail pops up with some archaic factoids you all obsess over it like it was the latest gossip from Hollywood?"
"Not now Beast, we're reading," Tabitha waved. "Listen to this! A hundred years ago the tallest man made building in the world was the Eiffel Tower!"
"Cool! I didn't know that," Kurt remarked.
"I told you about that in class yesterday!" Hank snapped.
"Yeah but it wasn't on the e-mail," Bobby said.
"Hey, maybe we can learn more history stuff on here!" Jamie said.
"How about learning about it in a textbook?" Hank suggested sarcastically.
"Bo-ring!" Tabitha said. "It says here that a hundred years ago the average life expectancy in the US was forty seven years!"
"That's still pretty old," Jamie said.
"It is not!" Hank snapped.
"Is that how old you are?" Jamie asked innocently.
"NO!" Hank said vehemently.
"Well how old are you?" Jamie said.
"Old enough not to answer questions like that," Hank told him.
"He's old," Rahne nodded.
"I am not!" Hank shouted. "I'm thirty five!"
"That's still old," Jamie said.
"It's not old!" Hank grumbled. "It's not!"
"Well it's old to us," Ray said.
"There's more," Kitty read. "Only eight percent of the homes had a telephone and a three minute call from New York City to Denver cost eleven dollars!"
"That's nothing," Hank made a face. "You should see the monthly phone bill the Professor gets."
"Sugar cost four cents a pound," Jubilee read. "Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen and coffee was fifteen cents per pound!"
"Starbucks would have made a killing then," Ray quipped. "Then again at their prices you probably would have bought a car back then too!"
"A hundred years ago crossword puzzles, canned beer and ice tea hadn't been invented yet," Rahne read.
"Really?" Amara was surprised. "Even in Nova Roma we've had iced tea for centuries!"
"Yeah how hard is it to figure out a recipe for iced tea?" Roberto asked. "You make tea, you put ice in it. You let it cool. Boom! Iced tea!"
"I suppose not everyone was as much a culinary wizard as you are, Roberto," Hank said sarcastically.
"There was no Mother's or Father's Day…" Kurt read the e-mail. "Boy that would have saved me a few headaches!"
"Two out of every ten adults in the United States couldn't read or write," Kitty went on. "And only six percent of all Americans had graduated from High School."
"And even back then Duncan Matthews would still be considered and idiot," Bobby snickered.
"Here's something Jean would find interesting," Rahne said. "Ninety percent of doctors had no college education! In fact they attended medical schools which were condemned in the press and the government as substandard!"
"And they still wouldn't have taken in mutants," Ray grumbled.
"Only 14 percent of houses had a bathtub," Tabitha read. "Toad would have loved that."
"Most women only washed their hair only once a month?" Kitty's jaw dropped. "And used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo! Gross!"
"Again Toad would have fit right in that time period," Tabitha said.
"What's Borax?" Jamie asked.
"Some kind of detergent I think," Roberto shrugged. "Listen to this. Canada had passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering their country for any reason!"
"How much you want to bet a lot of countries will make the same kind of laws regarding mutants?" Ray grumbled.
"There were only 8,000 cars in the United States and only 144 miles of paved roads," Kurt read. "And the maximum speed limit was ten miles per hour!"
"That is way too slow!" Kitty said.
"This from the girl who has had how many accidents and tickets for speeding?" Hank gave her a look.
"The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour," Rahne read on. "And an average worker made between two hundred and four hundred dollars a year?"
"I make that much on the betting pools around here every week!" Jamie was shocked. "Not to mention the floating poker games!"
"What poker games?" Hank looked at him.
"Uh, nothing…" Jamie said quickly. "Read some more Kitty!"
"Listen to this," Kitty read. "Marijuana, heroin and morphine were all available over the counter at the local drugstore pharmacies!"
"You have got to be kidding me!" Kurt was shocked.
"It's right here," Kitty pointed. "Heroin was thought to clear the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels and is in fact a perfect guardian of health!"
"Boy were they dumb back then!" Bobby said. "Imagine putting in all that junk in their bodies and thinking it was good for them. I'm hungry. Anyone seen my Jumbo BK Stacker burger?"
"Is this it?" Hank pointed with distain. "The one with four fried beef patties, five slices of cheese, five pieces of bacon and mayonnaise on it? Practicing healthy eating are we?"
"Don't worry I have a spinach salad with it," Bobby waved.
"California had only 1.4 million people," Sam read. "It was still no match for Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa and Tennessee which were much more heavily populated than it. And there were only thirty people in Las Vegas Nevada!"
"And the day Las Vegas legalized gambling the population probably tripled within the first hour," Sam snickered.
"The American flag had 45 stars," Ray read. "Why is that?"
"Because Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn't been admitted into the Union yet," Hank said sharply. "We went over that in class a week ago! Doesn't anyone pay attention?"
"Not really," Tabitha said.
"There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire country back then?" Kurt was shocked.
"Yeah, but think about all the unreported ones," Kitty pointed out.
"The three leading causes of death a hundred years ago were Pneumonia and the flu at number one," Kurt read. "Tuberculosis at number two and at number three…You gotta be kidding me!"
"Diarrhea?" Bobby laughed. "People actually died of diarrhea?"
"That's nothing to laugh at Bobby," Hank said.
"I wonder how many people died on the toilet?" Ray snickered.
"Did they even have toilets back then?" Kurt asked.
"I could look it up," Jamie said. "It might be on the Internet."
"Cool! Let's do it!" Bobby said.
"Now wait a minute…" Hank said. "You're not supposed to be…"
"Hey look, there's a story here about this old Hollywood starlet and how she died with her head in the toilet!" Roberto pointed.
"Elvis died on the toilet," Bobby said.
"That is propaganda and you know it!" Rahne, a big Elvis fan snapped.
"Well let's look it up!" Bobby challenged.
"I wonder how many big stars died on the toilet?" Tabitha asked. "Hey maybe that could be my next history report!"
"No way! I wanna do that!" Ray snapped.
"So do I!" Roberto told him.
"I give up," Hank hung his head and slowly trudged out of the classroom. "George Bernard Shaw would roll in his grave to see the salvation of humanity going down the toilet."