My brain has the bizarre trait of being able to regurgitate obscure trivia on a whim. Conversations, not so much. The five words I fear most uttered by my Bride have always been, “What did I just say?”
She knows. Having dealt with my sieve-like mind for three decades, she has seen what it is not capable of.
When it comes to crossword puzzles, my brain is a well-oiled machine, able to recall ephemera no one should think about, let along be able to recall. Here are some examples:
Did you know that the book “Green Eggs and Ham” started as a bet? Apparently, Dr. Seuss (otherwise known as Theodore Geisel) was challenged to create a book using fewer than fifty different words. Seuss did, and the loser of the wager, Random House founder Bennett Cerf, was $50 poorer as the result.
Calling someone a fathead is more a truism than an insult. About sixty percent of a human brain is made of fat.
And here I thought that was where the pounds and pounds of mucous we unload into tissues every flu season was warehoused there.
Well, SMH! Millennials were not the early adopters of text-speak: OMG can be traced back to Winston Churchill in 1917. In a letter to Winnie, John Arbuthnot Fisher, a retired British Navy Admiral, wrote to Churchill (at the time a member of Parliament) about some new titles that were about to be bestowed. Wrote Arbuthnot, “I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis. “O.M.G.! – Shower it on the Admiralty!!” Whether Arbuthnot sent LOL Cat pics to Churchill has yet to be determined.
Did you know that most toilets flush in E flat? That the “hashtag” key on your keyboard (#) is called an octotroph? Or that in 1811 and 1812, three earthquakes measuring around 8 on the Richter scale caused the Mississippi River to flow backwards!
Oscar the Grouch was orange in season one of “Sesame Street.” Bear Bryant was once asked to contribute $10 to help pay for a sportswriter’s funeral. According to legend, he said, “Here’s a twenty, bury two.”
Only one McDonalds in the world has turquoise arches. Government officials in Sedona, Arizona thought the yellow would look bad with the natural red rock of the city.
If you put the planet Saturn in a huge bathtub, it would float. Saturn is the second largest planet in the Solar System. However, it is made up mostly of gas and is less dense than water. Since it is lighter than water, it can float on water.
If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies you have $1.19, the largest possible amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
According to Genesis 1:20-22, the chicken came before the egg. “And God blessed them, saying, be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.” Not just the definitive word on the subject, but the definitive Good Word!
That’s enough for a Friday. See if you can tuck these nuggets into a conversation today. Shock your friends. Amaze your neighbors! Or, if you’re like me, prepare for the withering look I usually get when I try to shock my friends or amaze my neighbors. But, don’t worry. You get used to it. Eventually.
