Dear National Park Service:

Let’s have a talk about Ford’s Theatre.

Actually, no.  Let’s talk about me first.  That picture, to the right, there, is my Lincoln Shelf.  The bust on the left was bought at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, oh, ten years or so ago.

I want this clear: most people do not own a full shelf of books.  I own a full shelf of books just about Abraham Lincoln, and if you were to count the two or three additional shelves that are about the Civil War and Reconstruction, I probably easily own forty to fifty volumes of history in which the man plays a prominent part.  I am, in short, a fan of Mr. Lincoln’s.

I am also, and this is more relevant than it may initially seem, a middle school math teacher.  As such (here’s why it’s relevant) I am well and truly accustomed to being in a position where I am required to deliver important information to an audience that may, for one reason or another, be shall we say less than fully invested in hearing what I have to say to them.  I am accustomed to having to deliver that message to them anyway, and am well-versed in any number of techniques for recapturing their interest when I may have temporarily lost it.

Let’s talk about the fella you’ve got giving your talks to your tour groups, guys.  Or, rather, let’s talk about the fella who has given our talk the last two times I’ve been there– which were separated by four years, since we did not go to Ford’s Theatre the last time I was in Washington.  That said, the fact that we got the exact same dude both of the times I’ve been there makes me think that it’s likely that he does the lion’s share of them.  I’m not going to name this guy, although I can probably find his name on the Internet easily enough.  I’m sure he’s a good guy and he’s clearly impressively knowledgeable about what happened that night in April of 1865.

Let’s tear off the Band-Aid right quick: He sucks, and you should get rid of him.

Again: I’m sure he’s lovely in person.  His family’s probably fond of him.  I’m sure he’s nice to his dogs and, y’know, gives to charity and goes to church every Sunday and all that stuff.  I don’t want you thinking I dislike him personally.  But it takes a special kind of person to get up in front of a bunch of people and give a talk about a historical topic and make it engaging.  And this guy is not that person.

For the second trip in a row to Ford’s Theatre, 80% of my kids were sound asleep within five minutes of what ended up being nearly a thirty minute lecture about the night of Lincoln’s assassination.  I looked around at one point.  I would say that 80% figure was accurate to within a few points for everyone under eighteen that I could see, and even about a third of the adults were nodding off.

My tour guide fell asleep.  Let me say that again: my tour guide, a man so invested in American history that he has literally made it his career to travel around on exhaustingly tight schedules and talk to kids about it, fell asleep.

I stayed awake.  Rage is motivating.

You need to understand something, Ford’s Theatre.  Unlike, say, my math classes, virtually everyone in that theatre was there because they wanted to be.  They chose to go see your presentation.  And, also much unlike my math classes, a large number of the people in that room were there on weekend trips, meaning that they’d been to a whole lot of different places before you, were going to see many places after you, and very likely were just as sleep-deprived as my students, who had had maybe eight hours of sleep if they were lucky in the past two days and had spent twelve hours on a bus to get to you.

The fact that this phenomenon has occurred both times that I have seen this lecture, and that furthermore the lecture was exactly word-for-word the same both times I saw it– I remembered enough turns of phrase to be confident that this was the case– makes me think that it is very likely that my two experiences were not random aberrations.  That you are, in fact, allowing a National Park Service ranger to literally bore his audience to sleep on a regular– if not a constant— basis.

This is unacceptable.

It is also incomprehensible.  If it were my job to stand in front of an audience every day and tell them something, and if every day that I stood in front of that audience and told them that thing it put them to sleep, I would change something!  It bewilders me on a nearly cellular level that this man is still doing this talk the same way.  Perhaps there are bright lights shining in his eyes and he has literally never seen the people in front of him.  Perhaps he is blind!  Perhaps someone who has the power to remove or replace him owes him money, or has been caught by him in some sort of compromising position.  Perhaps simply no one else wants the job.  I have no idea.  But… Christ, if a single student falls asleep in my classes I take it personally and I adjust.  I would literally not be able to live with this if this was how my day went.  I cannot comprehend how he can.

Perhaps it is time to consider that hitting an audience of tired, if enthusiastic, people with a thirty minute lecture may perhaps not be the best way to keep their attention.  You may not care about keeping their attention!  That is also possible.  But I would like to presume that you do.

Perhaps it is time to consider that if you have hired a man to talk about one of the most exciting stories in American history– for God’s sake, the most famous actor in America killed the President in a roomful of people, how can you make that boring?– and that man routinely lulls his audience to sleep, it may be time to try something else.

A suggestion:  I would like to point out that the location of these talks is, in fact, an active theatre.  (I don’t know if there’s a difference between a “theatre” and a “theater.”  I’d prefer to spell it the ‘merkin way.  I’m just gonna stick with that from here on out if that’s okay.)  Do you know what kind of person you have access to in an active theater?  Actors.

Reenact the goddamn assassination, is what I’m getting at here.  I understand that the stage may be set for some other play; I feel like dedicated people should be able to work around this a bit.  The dude’s made the point both times I’ve heard him (because it was the exact same speech) that My American Cousin was a funny play, and that John Wilkes Booth waited for the funniest moment in the play to shoot the President.

Maybe we could, I dunno, actually see a couple minutes of the play?  If the band plays Hail to the Chief when Lincoln walks in, maybe put that over the PA system or something like that?  Some accompanying audio here and there?  There’s a bit where he sneaks under the goddamn stage while the play is in session to get to the President.  I get that we probably can’t get all those folks under the stage to watch, but maybe send a crew down there and get some video of an actor dressed as Booth sneaking around?  I’m pretty sure the National Park Service can afford a projector and a drop-down screen.

You think anybody’s gonna be asleep if we get a few minutes of the actual (supposedly funny) play, with an actor playing Lincoln sitting in the booth, and then Booth actually sneaks in, shoots him in the head, and leaps onto the stage?  You’ll have kids climbing over themselves to find out what “Sic semper tyrannis!” means.  I’m sure you can find a stunt man somewhere who can make that jump reliably without hurting himself.  This is manageable, guys.  Maybe you feel like that box is a sacred space and you don’t want an actor up there; okay, fine.  Make a portable one and wheel it on stage.  Keep it off to the side when you don’t need it.  Do something.

I am on the verge of telling my tour company I never want to go back to this place with a group of kids again, and if I do, they should explicitly mark it as “nap time” on the itinerary.  That’s a damn shame.

This shouldn’t be this hard.  Fix it.