Archeology is, even as academic disciplines go, quite boring to the uninitiated. What does an archeologist do? Whatever it is, they sure as hell do it slowly. My concept of digging is to take a damn shovel and toss dirt around until I get tired, about 10 minutes later. Then I turn on women's volleyball on TSN. These blokes and lasses, however, sit around in some backass country like Egypt or Sri Lanka or France, and they swish dirt around with a little broom, and they cluck their tounges whenever they find a 3000 year old fossilized turd. Horrid.
I suppose its Harrison Ford's fault, for getting my hopes up. Like every other impressionable young boy, I based my concept of archeology on Indiana Jones. An archeologist was an unshaven, ruggedly handsome man who hunted for powerful and rare relics, who slept with amazingly attractive women, who could wipe out entire lost tribes or whole regiments of Nazis with a crack of his trusty whip. I thought the archeologist was the James Bond of the academic world, and I always wanted to be one so that all the dusty old English lecturers and chemistry researchers would envy my jet-setting lifestyle.
What's a boy to do when the last of his childhood dreams crashes down at his feet? My horrible lack of physical co-ordination ruled out many of my early dream careers (fire fighter, pro baseball player), my poor eyes ended the fighter pilot dreams (and I'm still pissed off at Tom Cruise for that, but that's another story), and, uh, some other unnamed inadaquecy ruled out my early teen dream of porn stardom. C'est la vie, I guess, but finding out that archeology is actually about as interesting as linoleum retailing was the straw that broke the camel's back. I haven't believed in anything since.
What's a boy with a total lack of trust supposed to do as an interest? Oh yeah, that's why I'm active in politics...
Go back.