Trivial Matters

As we do many nights of the week, my family and I were all seated around the living room watching our evening episode of Jeopardy! I was doing pretty well in several of the categories and I had just correctly answered a Double Jeopardy question that the contestant on the television missed. (C’mon man. Who doesn’t know that Robert Heinlein wrote the book Starship Troopers?) My daughter, EM2, looked at me and said, “Wow, dad. You’re pretty good at trivia.”

I thought about her comment for a moment and realized that yes, I was pretty good at trivia. I also realized that the statement wasn’t really a compliment.

I know a lot of stuff that nobody else cares about and has never done me any good in the real world. I don’t know how to rebuild a car engine, fix plumbing, or run electrical wire, but by God, I sure know that Myron MacLain created Captain America’s first shield, and is credited with inventing adamantium steel.

And I can tell you that the word sarcophagus is based on the Greek word “sarkophagos,” which means flesh-consuming. (I know. Gross, right?)

But what good is knowing a bunch of trivia? None at all. It’s even in the definition of the word trivia: “pieces of information of little importance or value.”

My brain, for some reason, just tends to hold onto little pearls of wisdom that nobody else wants to hear about. I can barely change a light bulb, but I know that the first commercially viable light bulb filaments were made of bamboo. Anybody care? Anyone? No?

Didn’t think so.

I don’t even seem to be able to retain useful trivia. I’m terrible at geography. I don’t know state capitols, the locations of major rivers, or even the location of most countries on a map outside of the USA and Canada. These facts might actually have some relevance in my life if I could retain them for longer than three seconds. But when it comes to information I wish I could remember, I seem to have the memory capabilities of a gold fish.

However, the words to the theme songs for Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, and The Beverly Hillbillies I will have on lockdown in my brain for the rest of my life. I will most likely be lying in my deathbed, singing to the nurse as she turns off all the machines in my hospital room, “Come and listen to my story ‘bout a man named, Jed…”

What can I say? I think there is something very wrong with the memory synapses in my brain. I imagine normal people’s brains as a series of drawers. If there is something you want to remember, you stick it in the drawer and it’s there for you the next time you come looking. My brains is just a bunch of shelves. Trivia facts are flat and heavy. I put them on a shelf, and they stay there forever. Important facts are round. Those suckers roll right off and fall on the floor the second I’m not paying attention.

I wish I knew why my mind worked this way. Maybe it was physical trauma. Perhaps when I was very young, my mother dropped me on my head during an episode of Jeopardy (which first aired on television in 1964, can you believe it?).

Most people hear that the ancient Egyptians were the first culture to domesticate cats over 4000 years ago and think, “Hmm. Interesting.” Then completely forget all about it.

My brain says, “Well, I better file that away for later because it just might come in handy on a long family car drive when I’m just about ready to kill one of the children.”

Being good at trivia does not make me better at my job, put food on my table, or keep me safe from predators. What trivia does, is that it tells me “Predator” was a 1983 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Also, Arnold Schwarzenegger made his movie debut in “Hercules in New York” in 1970. And let’s not forget that Hercules (also know as Heracles) was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman.

I can go on. I know you don’t want me to, I’m just saying that I could.

If I had lived in the early days of human existence, I probably wouldn’t have survived past my first decade of life. While all my friends and family were hunting for meat and figuring out which plants were safe to eat, I would have been pondering why my fingernails grew so much faster than my toenails.

It’s likely my life would have ended while staring at a flower and thinking, “I wonder why the bees like the purple flowers better than the yellow ones?”

Everyone else would be thinking, “Why is he just standing there? Doesn’t he see the Tyrannosaurus Rex about to eat him? Shouldn’t he be running by now?”

Before anyone starts sending me e-mails telling me that human beings and T-rexes were never alive during the same time period, yes, I am aware. Of course, I know that.

It’s trivia.

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