I was talking with a couple older men (apparently professors) and I asked them if they knew when the Confederacy had ceased to become a country. One indicated the Confederacy didn't cease until Frederick Douglas, the president of the Confederacy, had died. The other indicated I would have to look at the Gettysburg Address to find the answer to the question. Neither answer seemed satisfactory to me, and I began looking through a paperback book which contained maps of world history and brief synopses of different periods. It was written in German, which I could read. I thought about how those professors thought they knew so much, but in reality, I probably knew more than they about history. I could even read it in German, which they probably couldn't do. And as I leafed through the book through the part about United States history, I saw I already knew almost everything which was written. I saw Frederick Douglas had lived for several years in prison after the end of the Civil War. But I still wasn't satisfied the Confederacy had continued to be a country until his death.

I flipped ahead through the book until I came to maps of Asia. I began thinking of the terms Far East, Mid East and Near East. It was obvious where the Mid East was, but which was the Far East and Near East? Was Europe or Asia the Near East? As I looked at the maps of Asia, I realized my knowledge of Asian history was sorely lacking. But I could see that from Turkey to China, the history seemed interconnected. I flipped back to an earlier period of Asian history, which began right after a map of the United States and its history ended, and I began reading. The map showed different colors and the text told of the rise of the first Ottoman Empire. The text said it was uncertain how the empire began. I looked for dates and saw it was supposed to have begun in the 1820s. But that didn't seem correct to me. I knew there must have been much Asian history before that time, especially in China. But finally I realized the book I had only treated history of the last couple centuries.

***

I was driving a car and needed to stop to urinate. I saw a gas station on the other side of the street, but thought I was going too fast to turn. Nevertheless I recklessly swerved the car into the lot. The car spun around twice, completely out of control, and finally came to a stop in front of the air pump. I reflected that I had acted quite dangerously and was fortunate not to have had an accident.

Since I needed air in one of my tires, I got out, somehow took the tire off the car, held it between my legs and began putting air in it. It took quite a bit of air, and I put air in until I realized it was rather dangerous holding the tire between my legs because it could explode. So I held it in front of me and continued to put the air in. Finally I bounced it a couple of times and saw that it was fairly hard. But I could see it appeared to be worn out in two places and the inner tube was visible. Obviously it wouldn't last much longer.