Aha! I was excited because I had caught a grown-up making a "mistake." For whatever reason, I absolutely knew that if someone "went to school" with me that he or she was actually in my class. In elementary school, you see, first-graders have no interaction whatsoever with third-graders. I could therefore not conceive how my dad's friend could "go to school with him" if they were not in the same physical class. My life experience (and yet uncorrected misconception) told me such was the case, and I happily corrected my father based on the reality I knew. I remember being dumbfounded when he stood his ground and crushed my assumption (my reality?).

Though this little story is not of great significance, it illustrates quite clearly that reality is not a fixed, entirely common, value-free entity. Each of us carries his or her own "schemata" and cognitive framework to the table. Regardless of the input (text, video, music, etc.), we analyze the information based on mental constructs that are already in place. Now, if a simple phrase such as that mentioned above can paint different realities for two people existing at the same moment, how can anyone assert that literature of the sixteenth century "means" the same thing today that it did four-hundred years ago? Sadly, as much as we try to put ourselves in the position of the author, reader, or commonfolk of a particular area, we are unable to truly adopt their realities.

I suppose the best we can do is to at least recognize that when putting on the lenses of a different period (or its supposed reality), they are really just glasses of a different prescription worn over our own twentieth century, culturally and experientially defined, contacts. Much like Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty, in order for us to see a text we must first form a description of what it means. In order to do this, however, we have to touch its original reality with our own. In the process, we distort both images.