Never Try to Best Me at Trivial Pursuit

Somehow, over the course of my thirty-something years, I have developed a varied and vast and useless stockpile of knowledge. It’s great at parties, but beyond that it just sort of sits around in my gray matter waiting for an appropriate moment to pop out when I say, “Fun fact — did you know…?” and bore everyone within earshot to death with the details of the origin of the phrase 'sleep tight' or the mating ritual of the Bird of Paradise or the fact that there’s a species of puffer fish that makes mandala-like sand nests.

I’m complete shit at fractions, and I’m pretty sure this is because the part of my brain that was supposed to be devoted to all things mathematical ended up being the overflow lot for the part of my brain that stores things like the license plate of my boss at my first job and the preamble to the United States Constitution (which I memorized for no reason whatsoever in the fifth grade.)

It’s a little absurd, really. I can recall miniscule factoids I picked up in passing from an episode of QI, but I can’t for the life of me remember where the double letters are and aren’t in the word ‘recommend’. See? Spellcheck did it for me because I put in two c’s and two m’s. Double letters, man. They’re tough sometimes. Caribbean and Mediterranean give me problems, but I can spout off all twenty-three helping verbs without thinking.

I know that Shakespeare died on the anniversary of his birth: April 23rd, 1564 - April 23rd, 1616.

I know that the Romans occasionally flooded theatres and so forth and had mock naval battles, or naumachia.

I can recite the NATO phonetic alphabet.

I can name every freeway on-and-off-ramp along Highway 680 between the 580 interchange and the Benicia Bridge — in both directions. I mean, I suppose this is useful for giving directions, but in this age of GPS it’s hardly necessary.

I know that the average lifespan of the White’s Tree Frog in captivity is sixteen to twenty-two years, the name of the Second Officer on the Titanic was Charles Lightoller, and that Aaron Copland was the composer of what has become known as the ‘Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.’ song, and that the song is actually called ‘Appalachian Spring’.

It’s all so useless, and yet there it sits, in my noggin, cluttering up the place.

As if that weren’t bad enough, it’s not just informational tidbits I seem to collect — I am also some sort of freak quote-parrot. That started early on. I had one of my favorite books memorized and would ‘read’ it to my mother. But I could also repeat large sections of dialogue from films and television shows word-for-word, and with distinguishing character mannerisms. At one point in high school I had an entire thirty-minute episode of the BBC’s Waiting for God down pat.

Who does that?!

Can I remember anything beyond the basics of tectonic plate movement? Nope.

Can I calculate standard deviations? Hell no.

Can I remember anything about the battle of Little Bighorn beyond the fact that it did not go particularly well for Reno, Benteen, and Custer? Nope. But I can remember that it was Reno, Benteen, and Custer because of a song.

And there’s another thing — the manner in which I obtain this information. Sometimes I think it’s osmosis, honestly, but we all know that putting your textbook under your pillow and sleeping on it doesn’t actually work as a study technique. I have always been equal parts a reader and an auditory learner. I’ve picked things up from books and other physical publications, of course, and from interactions with others and all that time I spent in school, but I know that a great deal of the odd little things I know I learned from films and TV shows, and half the time the things I learned weren’t even integral to the main plotline! Well, except in the case of ‘Desk Set’ — now there’s the job I should have had. A researcher for a broadcasting company in the late 1950’s.

I don’t know. My mind makes strange little leaps of logic and I follow where it goes and sometimes what runs out of my mouth is a laundry list of answers to Trivial Pursuit* questions. So don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here with my wealth of useless information and complete inability to figure out percentages but the percentages will make me think of pies which will make me think of fruit and did you know that there was a time in England where raspberry jam was popular but very expensive so people made a substitute and there were craftsmen devoted to carving tiny wooden pips to go in the substitute jam to replicate the raspberry seeds?

I guess it’s just like Bunny Watson says: “I associate many things with many things.”

*I did once win a game of Trivial Pursuit because I knew that Clint Eastwood was the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.