The Fact Of the Matter

I’m a sucker for trivia. In fact, Ken Jennings, the host of the quiz show Jeopardy wrote a fine piece in the N.Y. Times reminding us that the word trivia used to mean the three basic courses taught 600 years ago, grammar, rhetoric and logic. The word itself has been trivialized.

Facts have taken a big hit from the MAGA mind ever since so-called alternative truths were introduced in 2016. And that’s a fact. They have made deceit a virtue.

Here are some tidbits I’ve recently come across which have found their way into my memory bank. Now I have to casually work them into a conversation.

I tried that the other day with the startling fact that three of our last five POTUS were born within six weeks of each other, Clinton, Bush and Trump, in the summer of 1946. Could it be that Mercury was in retrograde, or maybe nuclear fallout radiated the air?

How can I ever move a conversation to lead into the stat that only 17% of roads in this country were paved by 1935. The other 83% were gravelly or dirt. And that includes Easy Street and the Road to Riches.

The other day I learned there’s no such bird as a seagull. They are just gulls. Just as sardines don’t really exist but can be herring or many other short fish under six inches. I don’t know what to do with this info.

It is also true that the violin was saved from extinction by Catherine de Medici, Queen of France in the 16^th century. The instrument was first deemed by the Church to be licentious, too screechy and for scandalous dancing. Maybe they felt its sound resembled the seagull which doesn’t exist.

Here’s another scrap of knowledge to drop at a dinner party: ten million trees are felled annually just to manufacture toilet paper even though 70% of the world population does not use it. On second thought, better save this for another occasion and try the violin material for the party if you want to get re-invited.

Blame the Internet for all this. Folks before the millennium didn’t have the cargo we have to sort out. Has it elasticized our brain or must we forget something to make room for each new fact? I wonder what Google has to say about that.

Now, of course, we don’t need to spell, multiply or memorize anything. It’s all there waiting to feel the call of the click. I’m beginning to feel bad for my remembering brain. It may become vestigial and slough off. All that’s left for us is to never forget our Social Security number, pin and passwords and even those essentials are already well-known to hackers and to DOGE.

Why do we remember what we do? I knew the answer to this but I forgot. If I could only un-remember our current presidency I might live happily ever after. I’d even gladly delete all I just learned about gulls, sardines and violins and focus on the meaning of life. I swear I was on the verge of unlocking that mystery but it just slipped away.