Knowledge is Good

                                                         

I’m not stupid.   I just don’t know some stuff.    I think it's a fair assessment. It can be a source of chagrin to friends and family, but I challenge anyone to tell me that they know everything.  There are scientists who contend we only use ten percent of our brain.  Some will say even less than that.  Still, there are others who choose a more positive approach and say we have the potential to use much more than ten percent.   I probably use about two point five … maybe.  That Jeopardy guy probably didn’t use much more than that.  You know, that Kevin, or Ken, or Kyle Jones, or Jennings, or Jeffords guy.

Names have a tendency to escape me.  My daughter, a person with a HUGE brain, often becomes exasperated.  For example, she has a musician friend who was hired to write a lot of the music for a movie that came out in 2008.  He knows that Coppola-God-Father guy’s daughter, Sonia, or Sophie, SOPHIA! That’s it!  Anyway, she (Sophia) got Kristin’s friend the job because he’s pretty good. Kristin had recounted the whole story to me, so I was sharing it with my friend David, while she was here to visit.  I thought she wasn’t listening because her nose was in a notebook, (the Mac kind, not the ruled paper kind.)  

“David, Kristin’s friend Bradford was hired to do the music for Where the Wild Things Are.   It’s a Bruce Lee Movie.” 

“ It’s Jonze Mom, Spike Jonze. Bruce Lee was a kung fu guy.” (She WAS listening)

“Oh, that’s right, what was I thinking? Now I remember.  So, as I was saying, Spike Lee directed the film.  He’s a black director that did movies like Mo Better Blues.”

“ NO, Spike JONZE Mommy…damn!”

“ But I thought Spike Jones was dead. Wasn’t he a bandleader and an actor on Burke’s Law?  I didn’t realize he directed movies,” I countered. 

“OMIGAWD Mom, Spike Jonze is young.  He directed Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. He’s not black. He used to be married to Sophia Coppola.  WHAT is Burkes Law???”   

I decided I wasn’t doing well with this particular story.  But Kristin has more than one interesting story, so I decided to tell David a different story.

“Did I tell you that Kristin entertained a famous person in her apartment when she lived in Atlanta?”

I could see my daughter massaging her temples out of the corner of my eye.  Really, she’s far too young to be getting headaches, in my opinion.

“R.E.M played in Atlanta, and through a series of circumstances they went to Kristin’s apartment because she was having a get-together and had invited the opening band.   But she didn’t have enough toilet paper, so she told the people in the opening band to just go in if they got there first.  She never locks her door…can you imagine? Anyway, she told them she would stop to pick up toilet paper on the way home.  So she walks in holding this bag FULL of toilet paper and notices MICHAEL SNIPES sitting on her couch!”

“Noooooo Mom!” Kristin cried in a terribly plaintive tone. “His name is Michael STIPE.    And there’s no “S”.  Snipes are what you tricked me into hunting when we went on camping trips …remember? You told me they were furry creatures that hid in the bushes. You made me crouch with a paper sack and a flashlight so I could catch them. You banged on a metal pot to “flush” them out….REMEMBER?”                                                     

                                                                       

I had failed miserably with yet another name. And what’s more, I was beginning to believe I had damaged her emotionally, based on her reaction to the snipes, not Stipe, [he’s a musician] incident.

It was at that moment that I decided to write things I wanted to remember on post-it notes.  Now I have strange notes all over my house stuck to various objects.  The occasional visitor will see little squares of paper with things written on them like Spike Jonze-Malkovich, Michael Stipe- toilet paper-R.E.M, and  Rod Steiger (I can never recall his name. I always confuse him with Dennis Hopper.)   Other names on sticky notes include Kim Gordon, This is Spinal Tap, Billy Collins, Prefuse 73, Zelnorm, crème fraiche, and Thich Nhat Hanh.

Many of these notes are no longer relevant because I don’t know what they mean anymore.   I used to think Shapiro was a Japanese name and Goya foods were kosher products. I didn’t realize that smoked salmon was also lox. So much to learn (and remember) every day, no?

 But I do know stuff. I know lots of stuff.  

Printed in  Volume XVII,  Number 8        Tropical Breeze    August 2007   Floyd E. Egner III, Publisher and Editor