People in History I'm Thankful To

There's a lot of things we take for granted, living in the 21st Century. Especially Generation Y- like the internet. Technology. Not dying of the plague/measles/TB, you get my drift.

And whoever realised using leeches on sick people was a bad idea? I can not express enough words of gratitude.

So I thought a good way to start off 2013 was to thank the people that have created or led the way to things in life that I am a fan of. From the little things to the big things that I hold dear in my life.

So here we go: [Please Note: The identity of all these people is not actually known. I'm just putting good thoughts out in the universe].

1. The person who thought of hot showers: Who ever it was who first realised warm water was a lot more comfortable to bathe in than cold water, thank you! Heat= Good. Especially in winter, nothing beats a hot shower/bath (I am aware some people don't like baths, because to quote my sister "it's like bathing in your own filth". She would not have survived a few hundred years ago).

Fun Fact: Did you know that brides started carrying bouquets when they got married in the 14th century to cover up BO? People didn't bathe that much, but they would in May. So June was the month for weddings, because people still smelt relatively OK by then.

2. The person who first made chocolate: I used to have a T-shirt that said "Save the Earth- it's the only planet that has chocolate" It was a case of "that's funny, because it's true." Well, to be fair, we don't know if another planet has chocolate... or maybe there's a planet made of chocolate...that would be awesome.... Sorry, having visions of that Simpsons clip about chocolate land! 

The internet (i.e. Wikipedia) tells me that chocolate appeared around 1100 BC by the Aztecs, and then the Europeans sweetened it with sugar and fat. So to that little Aztec person who first picked up a cocoa bean and said "let's eat this"- Thank you! Where would I be without you? 

I would be hungry. And we would be short a food group. (Chocolate is a food group, right?) 

3. The first person to play music: Music is the soundtrack to our lives... which sounds incredibly cheesy, I know, but it's true! How many times can you associate a song with a memory before anything else? How many times have you put song lyrics as your Facebook status, because they say it way better than you ever could? How many songs are in your iTunes library, just because you heard it somewhere and it got stuck in your head until you had to buy it? 

And sometimes getting a song in your head is not helpful, or the song that randomly pops in to visit makes no sense to the situation/conversation at all (e.g. I had  'Popular' from Wicked stuck in my head during the intermission of Annie. No clue why). What's worse is when it's only a few lines of the song that go around and around your head until you want to scream, because you just can't remember what comes after "I threw a wish in a well/don't ask me I'll never tell/I looked to you as I fell/ And now you're in my way." 

But how does that ABBA song go? 

And I've often wondered, how did it all start? 
Who found out that nothing can capture a heart 
Like a melody can? 
Well, whoever it was, I'm a fan 

Enough said, really. Am I right?

4. The first person who hugged someone: I like hugs. I love hugs. I don't get enough hugs. I am aware not everyone feels this way (when my grandfather died I tried to hug my sister and she punched me in the stomach- literally).
But I love them. They're comforting. When it's cold in winter, they keep you warm for a moment, and they're medically good for you! (Thank you, Grey's Anatomy for that fun fact!)
And I'm pretty sure hugging has been around since the beginning of time. But I'm also pretty sure many things  were around at the beginning of time (or later) that we don't do anymore (see mention of leeches, above). But I'm really glad hugging stuck it out.
Especially in this day and age, when there's so much political correctness over who to hug, when to hug, how to hug, how long to hug for... you get the point.

Actually, one of the great things about moving out for the first time last year, was that I got more hugs from my family and friends. (And more "I love you's" but that's a different point).

So whoever first hugged another person, thank you. And on a similar notion- I enjoy this guy's thinking. There needs to be more hugs in the world!

5. Whoever decided fanfiction was not weird and was an actual thing: The first time I used to dream out alternate endings to my favourite books in my head, making up my own stories, I thought I was weird. It wasn't until I was in Year 12 that I realised it was an actual thing. People were writing these down and other people were reading them. It had a name. Well, I felt relieved. 

Fanfiction gets an unfair stigma for either being thought of as poorly written stuff by 12 year olds, or things like 50 Shades of Grey. And yes, there is much of that, in both categories. There is countless stories for every pairing you can imagine and think "who writes this stuff?" There is, apparently, thousands of fics where the heroine (who bares a striking and uncanny resemblance to the author) meets a celebrity who falls madly in love with them at first sight and they live happily ever after. Personally, I've never understood how people can write fictional stories about real people. But that's just me. 

But there is good stuff there- if you can find it. And there's times it seems the more popular a fandom becomes, the more the quality of fanfiction available within that fandom drops. 

But I've made some great friends through fanfiction. It's a great way to practice writing within different genres, rather than creating a whole new world and getting people to invest in that. And it's a great way to answer those unanswered questions readers/viewers have (what happened after Elphaba and Fiyero left Oz in Wicked? What if Quinn had never gotten pregnant on Glee? What if Bella had picked Jacob instead of Edward? You get my point). 

That being said, I still haven't told my parents I write it. 

6. Jack Dorsey: (Yes, we're up to the people who's names I know now). Who is Jack Dorsey, you may ask? He is the Mark Zuckerberg of Twitter... in other words,  the guy who created it.
Now, I have Facebook and have since 2008. It's enabled me to keep in touch with people from high school and university, find people from primary school, and people who similarly "like" everything from Wicked: The musical to Sizzler's Cheesy Toast (am I right? Delicious).
But for some reason, I really latched onto Twitter in 2009 (I think.I'm a little fuzzy on dates). And 26, 572 tweets later, I am on it a lot. 

Why? Well, confession: I joined twitter because I knew some of my favourite celebrities had accounts (Delta Goodrem and Rove, mostly at the time). And it mostly stayed there for a while. Then I started making friends on twitter. Then I made more. Then I got a tweet from Alyson Hannigan (American Pie, Buffy, How I met your mother) for my 20th birthday.

Since then, I've been lucky enough to get tweets from a few celebrities and heaps of Australian theatre people. Most importantly, I have the most amazing friends all over the world. And getting to have conversations over social media with people on the other side of the world who are reading my Wicked fanfiction and saying lovely things, makes me feel incredibly blessed.

And now I'm being followed by Greg Page, the original Yellow Wiggle. We've come a long way, my friends.

My inner child is thrilled

7. JK Rowling: Seriously, if you don't know who this is.... you don't deserve these words. I was 10 years old when my mum caught an interview with Jo (she lets her fans can call her Jo- it's a thing) not long before Goblet of Fire came out, and she and my Dad bought me the first two books.
In hindsight, this was interesting. My parents had never read or heard of Harry Potter before this interview, and were not of the habit of buying me two books for no reason in the middle of the year. Usually it was "wait until Christmas/birthday and ask for it then). So, it must have been fate.
Because I fell immediately in love with the Wizarding World and Hogwarts. I saw bits of me in Harry, and a lot of me in Hermione. And the rest is history.
It is funny though, that my parents would never buy me any Harry Potter merchandise, thinking I'd grow out of it and then be stuck with all this stuff. Yet here it is, 13 years later and I'm still a fan. Dude, I just got through bragging that a (now former *sob*) Wiggle follows me on Twitter. You don't think a 7 series books about the ultimate battle between good and evil is going to stand the test of time? Who looks silly now?

But honestly, Harry Potter has led me to some amazing friends. I've learned a lot (I once guessed a question  about animals right at a trivia night because it was asking about "lupines". Lupine= Lupin. See that?). And it never, never, never gets old no matter how many times you read it. And I have read it a lot. 

Harry has been there for me through everything. And I'm pretty sure it always will be. I'm so grateful Jo got this random idea on a train one day and decided to write it down.

8. Stephen Schwartz: I know what people are going to say. If I'm about to go on a spiel about how I'm grateful for Wicked, shouldn't I be thanking Gregory Maguire instead? Because if there was no book, there'd be no musical.
This is true. However... I didn't really like the book. If before I knew the musical existed, someone had handed me the book and said "Hey, you like The Wizard of Oz. (I do). Read this book called Wicked." 
I would not have liked it. I may not have even finished it, and just been stuck on my initial reaction of "what the actual hell?"
The book was kinda weird. And depressing.

The musical is happy (well, the ending is that kind of bittersweet happy, but still). It is funny. And has many Wizard of Oz references. And has Defying Gravity. And the characterisation of Elphaba is different. Several times in the show, I saw myself in Elphaba. That never happened reading the book.

And everything I love Wicked for, is because of Stephen Schwartz. And it's not just that I've made many friends through Wicked (I have- thank you, Jack Dorsey!), or it's inspired over 20 Wicked fanfictions (see #5), or that I now know, admire, have met and have tweets from many Australian (and international) theatre actors; but the fact that every time something new grabs me. It still speaks to me, still moves me.

I don't know a single person who even if they saw but didn't like the show (and who are these people, really?), was not awed and moved by Defying Gravity. 

What people in history are you guys thankful for?