Why I'm Extraneous

   I don't know when it started.  My mother said as a little girl, I would be sitting in the movie theatre with her.  On the screen, the butler would bring a long white box with a large bow into the room to give to the lovely lady of the house.  The lady would (to me) slowly remove the bow, take the cover off the box,  open the green tissue (unless it was a b/w movie), exclaim delightfully, and remove the beautiful red roses from the box.  The next scene would show the roses in a vase and the lady on the phone, probably thanking the sender.  Mama said I'd ask in a loud stage whisper, "Mama, what happened to the box and ribbon?"  As a toddler, I am told, I would unwrap a gift, put the present aside and play with the paper and ribbon. See!  Even in those early years,  I was fascinated with extraneous stuff.  I guess it was a natural segue to extraneous, trivial information.

   My brothers and I have always been trivia buffs. Hence, anything that one of us learned, we passed it on to the other two.  As a reader, I seem to remember those tidbits of info that pique my curiosity.  I can remember sitting in Advanced Grammar and Rhetoric as an undergraduate English major in college.  In spite of having to diagram Wm. Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis and trying to learn all of that English grammar I'd be teaching to my own students one day, I still remember learning that (in 1965) the two areas in which English is the official language are aviation and baseball.  It may have changed since then, but I can still hear the interview of a famous Hispanic baseball great, Basaball's been berry, berry good to me!

   Obviously, the greatest boon to my trivia-gathering has been my teaching public speaking.  I've had my very own "reporters" to tell me interesting things.  I've had my very own READERS' DIGEST in the form of my speech students. And have I learned hundreds of bits of knowledge  since 1969 when I first began teaching speech!

   My philosopher-professor husband was the smartest person I ever knew.  When he died, I received a great deal of correspondence from former students, colleagues, and university administrators.  Many of the kind notes indicated that he was "the most brilliant person at Tulane University."  Yet, this brilliant man is the one who crowned me, THE QUEEN OF EXTRANEOUS INFORMATION.  He said I knew more unimportant, worthless information than anyone he knew!  He was right.  I am a walking encyclopedia of the English Monarchs from Henry VII to date.  I know the names, order, and the fate of the wives of Henry VIII [divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived].  The swans in England all belong to the Queen (or William when his time comes).  Before Hurricane Katrina, I could tell you the number of bars in Orleans Parish, as well as the number of churches in the same area (more bars than churches).  I know that although the result of a lie detector test is NOT admissible in court, the tracking of a Bloodhound dog IS admissible!  I know that a portmanteau is a satchel/suitcase, usually found in Victorian literature, but it is also the blending of two independent nouns to make a third noun, i.e. motor and hotel to make motel, breakfast and lunch to make brunch, etc. 

   Did you know that the beautiful, talented Rita Hayward did not sing for herself in any of her movies?  Did you know that Dana Andrews who did not sing for himself in the early version of the movie STATE FAIR, was an opera singer in college?  Did you know that Marge Champion (of Marge and Gower Champion dancing duo) was the model for Disney's Snow White?   Did you know that Francis Bacon died after getting sick by being out in the snow in England as he was stuffing a chicken with snow and ice as an experiment in preservation of meat/fowl?  Did you know that George Washington died after catching cold after he got back from a winter horse-trip to inspect his mulch pits?  Perhaps you do know that Pop Warner of Pop Warner Football League and Cheer leading Association for kids was the football coach and mentor of the great American athlete and Olympian Jim Thorpe.

   My mother used to say that she was sure I knew something about every subject on Earth.  Well, she loved me.  However, her sister (who was a wonderful first grade teacher ) was convinced that the Russians introduced "new math" to confuse the minds of American students as a ploy during the Cold War.  Therefore, my knowledge of "new math" has been to smile knowingly and say, "Ah, yes. . . Like the Opium Wars when England dirtied her hands by encouraging China to accept importation of Opium to solve trade deficits."  See how cleverly I get away from knowing how to actually navigate the binary system?

   Now that you, Dear Reader, understand fully where my title of QUEEN OF EXTRANEOUS INFORMATION comes from, future blogs can concentrate on other, perhaps more meaningful, information. . .or maybe not.  As I get older and begin to have "senior moments," perhaps the only things I can remember are extraneous! For some reason, I can see myself as a very old woman, going around like the Ancient Mariner, muttering divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived!