Columbus Sailed that Ocean Blue

I was reading an economics book called, “The World is Flat” and the very beginning the author told the story of Columbus.  HE thought the world was round, and everyone else said it was FLAT.  So he said, “I’ll show them” and in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.  He was originally going to take off in 1491, but could only come up with thumb, run, and plum as rhymes.  “1491, Columbus stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum… ACK! terrible rhyme.  Let’s wait another year!”

When he made it to America he discovered a bunch of dark skinned people, and had innocently mistaken them for Indians.  You think they would have planned ahead a little and brought someone who could speak Indian, “HALLO THERE! TANK YOU COME AGAIN!”  Don’t know what their plan was showing up all casual, “hey guys!  How’s it going? Oh, we’re just stopping by.  Just wanted to say hi to our neighbors on the other side of the Atlantic!  Yep It took us 3 months to get here… and we thought we were dead, and we almost had a mutiny… ha ha…. Ha…” the Indians stared back blankly… “Well, we… we weren’t planning on staying long… ACTUALLY we were just leaving!”  That’s when the sta. Maria squealed away.

When did it hit them that it wasn’t India?  They’re sailing back and Columbus says,  “hey Eric the terrible… psss… over here… Did you notice any call centers while we were there?

“No”

“(gasp)  GREAT SCOTT!”

I think Columbus’s simple mistake has been the biggest typo left on world history…. How long ago was that? Some 600+ years?    And… WE STILL CALL THEM INDIANS?  You think that would have been handled very promptly right then and there…

There couldn’t have been more than100 people on those ships, Columbus could have called a meeting together, “alright me mateys,  We ORIGINALLY THOUGHT that we were in India.”

“(Cheers and grunts)”

“BUT we were wrong!”

“(grumble grumble grumble)"

“This is AMERICA!  So instead of calling them INDIANS, because they’re not… NO Jósurr, they’re NOT… we’re going to start calling them NATIVE AMERICANS… can you say that with me?”

“(all together) Native Ameriplanes?”

“YES.  NATIVE AMERICANS…” more slowly than the first…

That’s all you had to do Columbus… when the people got back to Spain they would have been like, “WE DISCOVERED THE NATIVE AMERICANS!!!” 

And everyone would have been like, “Native Americans, what a brilliant discovery!  We’ll give Columbus a giamungous medal for this discovery!”

And to this day, instead of kids playing cowboys and Indians, they would be playing cowboys and Native Americans…

To be continued…