Those are not the names of the seven dwarfs (dwarves?) in the Disney version of Snow White.
Okay, three of them are. The missing ones are Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, and Dopey. In their place I put what many think my posts are made up of.
They are wrong, wrong, I tell you.
Did you know that Snow White had a sister named Rose Red? Well, she did.
People have asked me why I like trivia. I don't like trivia. I just tend to remember things that I read or see, unless it is really, really important, and then I can't remember it to save my life. I suppose most of the things I remember (or at least have a good recall concerning) are subjects in which I am interested. These do not usually include science or math, but sometimes I surprise myself.
I am not nearly as smart as I used to think I was. I have enjoyed watching the program Jeopardy! for many years (and I'm going to miss Alex Trebek, may he rest in peace, greatly). I used to think I knew the answers to most of the questions. For the past couple of months I have actually kept count each evening of the answers I know, and usually it's a little over half of them. It all depends on the categories. I know absolutely nothing (or frightfully little) about rappers and rap music, 21st-century films, and (see above) science or math.
I guess random facts stick in my brain, such as Alexander Hamilton was born on the island of Nevis, the country named for a king of Spain whose name is derived from a Greek phrase meaning "lover of horses" is the Philippines, and Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mockingbird.
What tickles and usually astonishes me the most is when I know the answer but not a single one of the three contestants does, which happened twice recently when the answers were "kerosene" and "Pythagoras". The problem is not only that new facts are occurring all the time but that facts change (which to my way of thinking means they were not "facts" in the first place). When I grew up, for example, there were nine planets in our Solar System, and now there are only eight. When I was exposed to the periodic table of elements for the first time, there were 94 elements. Now there are 118. Nobody had ever heard of a quark when I was in school, and now six types have been identifed: up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top.
So as what I thought I knew recedes into history, so will I. Eventually no one will remember me at all. But even more distressing is that people who can name the 12 labors of Hercules or can quote at length from King Lear will become rarer and rarer until there are none at all.
Full confession: I can do neither.
I told you I wasn't as smart as I thought I was.
The Apostle Paul said it best: "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." (Romans 12:3)
Here endeth another post from your sober friend, rhymeswithplague.
I am endlessly appalled (and ashamed) at the chasms in my knowledge. Attempting to fill those gaps (and retain the information) will keep me occupied until my dying day. And I will fail. Again.
ReplyDeleteSue, you needn’t be appalled or ashamed at the “chasms” (surely that is an exaggeration!) in your knowledge. I can’t say that I view having a good memory as some sort of achievement. It just is what it is, and the proper reaction should be thankfulness.
DeleteI say that I have a head full of useless knowledge. And Snow White and Rose Red are not from the same story as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Which story came first I do not know.
ReplyDeleteEmma, I was going to say I knew they were not from the same story but she was still the same Snow White. However, I looked it up just now and the two Snow Whites are different people. In the original stories, their names are even spelled differently.
DeleteInteresting. When I read your post and thinking about remembrance. How much remembrance is skewed over time. At least that's my excuse for not remembering something accurately.
ReplyDeleteRed, I was an only child so can’t vouch for this, but I’m told that siblings raised together often have totally different recollections in adulthood of the same event. I would find that very frustrating.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that remembering much trivia, etc. is due to memory foam mattresses. I didn't come up with that, I saw it in a comic on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteJust think, we each have a universe of memories and knowledge in our head. Where does that part of us go after we die, I wonder.
Do youJeannelle, do you actually have to sleep on the memory foam mattress or is it enough just to have one in the house?
DeleteI believe that our memories are a part of our soul, which someone has defined as consisting of our mind, our intellect, and our will, and that when we die the soul returns to the Creator God who made us. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, according to St. Paul.
I was brought up being told that when we die we will remember nothing of our earthly lives. It made me sad and still does.
DeleteAnd, yes, you need to sleep on memory foam to get the effect. Not sure if it works with memory foam shoe inserts.
Jeannelle, people who know exactly what happens when we die are just guessing.
DeleteIt seems the Grimm Brothers had more than one version of Snow White. Rose Red and her Snow White sister were a pair of little angels, kind to a bear and then discovering kindness towards a dwarf is over rated.
ReplyDeleteI cannot quote at length from King Lear, or for that matter any other Shakespeare play. As for Hercules and his twelve labours, my mind is a total blank.
Alphie
Alphie Soup, the only thing I know from King Lear is the line about how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child and also that his daughters were Cordelia, Gonorrhea, and Ronald Reagan.
DeleteThanks to Mr. D.P. Morris, my old high school English teacher, I can quote, though perhaps not at length, from Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo och Julia (as they say in Sweden), and Julius Caesar. All I can dredge up about Hercules is the Hydra and cleaning the Augean stables. There are great gaps in my brain where the grey matter ought to be.
Debra just commented "JUSTICE FOR PLUTO NOW!" on my blog.
ReplyDeleteTasker, I think it only fair that all of the recently-discovered dwarf planets support the growing “JUSTICE FOR PLUTO” movement by binding themselves together with Gorilla Glue into one enormous Pluto-like planet whose status will never be in doubt.. I call my idea neo-Plutonism.
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