"Tell them how it was . . ."

Recently, I had a moment of disillusionment.

As some {or all or none} of you may know, I used to be a school teacher. When I first got started, a fellow English teacher {and good friend} gave me one of her favorite things to teach. It comes from the book "Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man" by Jesse Owens. There's a chapter entitled, 'Open Letter to a Young Negro' where Owens recounts his experience in the long jump in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It's a great story about how Jesse almost failed to quailfy for the event and how he was helped by Hitler's prize athelete, Luz Long.

Each year when I taught that story, I got excited. I thought how cool it was that I was going to share a part of history with my students that they probably didn't know about. I thought it was great that I had an interesting story involving sports that some of my reluctant readers might actually read and enjoy. I thought this was an opportunity to help kids realize and see the goodness in people. Now I'm wondering if I was just teaching them a lie.

Because, as it turns out, it may just be a story.

I was getting ready for work a couple of weeks ago when a newspiece about this story came on NPR. I literally stopped where I was because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. According to an Olympic historian, Tom Ecker, Owens admitted to him that it wasn't true, that he told the story because people liked to hear it.

For the most part, I think I am a trusting person; I believe what people tell me. Maybe that makes me too naive, too much of a pushover. But now, I'm less trusting than I was before I heard this; I'm less likely to believe cool stories like this. I know that Owens and Long did in fact become friends and that the entire story isn't made up, but still.

Am I overreacting to this? Is it really not a big deal? Am I just a silly girl who believes too much too easily {side note to help illustrate - I thought Santa was real until I was 10}?

Or is it reasonable to be upset by this?

I can't decide.