Trivia!

I've been a trivia junkie for as far back as I can remember. As a kid I turned to books for amusement because most of my toys would be lying broken minutes after I touch them. I'm so adept at taking things apart but not at putting them back into place.

Mom: I'm not buying you toys anymore!

Me: (staring at the armless Voltron robot) Why?

I grew up on David Attenborough's Life on Earth, The Living Planet, Saturday Fun Machine and of course Sesame Street. It was a healthy balance of closet dorkiness and play time that turned me into the insane deviant that I am today, but I digress.

Most dictionaries define trivia as knowledge that is, well, trivial. Unimportant, inconsequential and useless are some of the adjectives used to describe trivia. All pieces of Trivia are fact but not all fact can be used as Trivia. Fact, however, can be trivia depending on its usage. If you're talking to a doctor and you told him that your mandible is broken in three places you're telling a fact since he knows what the mandible is, but if you walked up to an average joe and told him that your mandible is the lower, movable part of the jaw, you're stating a piece of trivia since he might not know what the heck a mandible is. If you're a guy and joe thinks you're trying to pick him up that's when you end up with a mandible broken in three places, but again I digress.

So why am I addicted to useless knowledge then?

Simple. Knowing the answer to things gives me a certain degree of confidence and satisfaction. Trivial knowledge can also come in handy if I join quiz contests or gameshows. There are also several unorthodox uses for trivia. I have a friend named Tony who once boasted that he can say the phrase "I love you" in sixteen languages and dialects.

Tony: (proudly, to his crush) I can say I love you in 16 languages! Care to hear them?

Girl: I can answer that in two letters. N-O!

A lot of people believe that copious amounts of trivial knowledge=smartness. I beg to disagree. Trivia that came as result of genuine study and intellectual proficiency CAN equate to genuine smarts but trivia ingested and stored by rote to impress chicks or to bluff your way around cconversations won't serve any useful purpose. Take the case of the social climber who went to a gala event pretending to know everything about classical music. She comes up to a famous composer and asks:

Matron: Is Bach still composing?

Composer: No, madam. He's DE-composing.

I hope to share my love for useless knowledge with this blog. Those who don't agree can meet up with me and go home with a broken mandible, a dislocated femur and lacerated ego. Kidding!:)