Thinking about the sacrificial turkey for the annual Thursday feast, it occurs to me that I'd be more likely to stuff my face with stuffing than with the bird itself. Stuffing often contains unexpected stuff, from oysters to popcorn. Not the same stuff as in stuff happens. More like, I can’t enough of that wonderful stuff.
Stuff is what contestants have a surfeit of on quiz shows.
The current champ on Jeopardy knows enough stuff to stuff a gaggle of fowl. He delivers
his answers like a verbal machine gun. I can’t understand a word he says but
they get an approving nod leaving his rivals in a huff and making him a kind of stuffed shirt until last night when he was dethroned. But he walked away with enough bucks to strut his stuff.
When asked about his early childhood, he revealed that he
could recite the Presidents in order before he could read. Maybe he got a
head start boning up, umbilically, in that embryonic sea.
I could almost name our Presidents when I was ten or eleven.
I say almost because I always got stuck around Millard Fillmore until I figured
out a way to get unstuck. Fillmore comes between Polk and Pierce. This pointed knowledge was enough to etch itself to my bones. I probably thought of myself as hot stuff. Otherwise,
Fillmore is distinguished for being the most undistinguished occupant of the
Oval Office, with Tyler and Taylor not far behind.
Why do we remember some stuff while other stuff just sloughs
off as fluff? My guess is that memorizing this useless bit of presidential
stuff was accompanied by a trauma or got attached to an emotional event that caused it to cling to my marrow.
Now, eighty-two years later I find myself laden with this sort of stuff in my head. It might be useful if I find myself in an MRI drifting off, thinking of Millard Fillmore which ought to be enough to induce a semi-sleep state. As Shakespeare said, We are such stuff as dreams are made of.
