What would you do?

Morgan and I went to the Titanic exhibit at the Indiana State Museum yesterday. We enjoyed it very much. It was the second time I have been, the first for Morgan. We met a homeschooling family for lunch and the field trip. The company was great and the exhibit was very interesting.

When you start the tour they give you a boarding pass of a real passenger of the Titanic. It tells some details about why they were traveling, who they were traveling with and what class they were. When I went before I had quite a juicy story. I was a teenage girl running away with her boss from the candy store she worked in. Scandalous!!! He was a married father, so they were traveling under fake names. Shocking! She was also pregnant at the time and didn't know it. Outrageous! You also find at the end whether you survived or not. My passenger had survived, but her male companion did not.

So, this time around I received a lady that I could much more relate to. She was 35 year-old mother traveling with her 13 and 16-year old sons. Her back story was maybe controversial, but I can totally see the place that she was in. Her husband was a champion boxer and apparently she had left him and returned to her native England. However, her boys were home sick for their home in Rhode Island. So they were returning as 3rd class passengers.

At the end of the exhibit I found out that she had survived... but her boys had not. That is what I can't quite get out of my mind. I just don't understand it. Now, I'm not saying I know anything of the circumstances, but how could she do that? How could she get on a life boat and leave her boys? They were not men by any means! We would have all went... or we would have all stayed. That is just beyond my comprehension!!

Now, one can imagine that maybe she really thought they would be okay. Or maybe they were all together, but somehow she survived and they didn't. Maybe they were considered men at that age back then, I don't know. But I would seriously guess that she went on a life boat and the boys didn't. I know you shouldn't say what you would do until you are put in that situation, but I think I know myself enough that it would never even be a question to me. I'm sure they didn't force her on the lifeboat.

So what would you do? I know what I would do. No question in my mind. I would never leave my kids.

And the funny thing is, almost a hundred years later nothing really has changed. Mothers still choose themselves over their kids. And for my previous passenger, the teenage girl, that still happens today as well. I guess human nature is human nature whether it is 1914 or 2011.