Useless Knowledge

Yesterday, I was sitting at my desk doing work when a coworker interrupted me to ask me a question.

“What was the name of the boss on The Jetsons?” he asked.

Without missing a beat I said “Mr. Spacely.”

He came back with “and what was the name of the place they worked?”

“Spacely Sprokets” I replied. “And their competitor was Cogswell Cogs.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Thanks…I knew you would know.” Then he turned around and walked away.

The ease at which I was able to call up these random factoids at will impressed even me. And it made me think. What other random useless information is store deep within my brain?

I have always been freakishly good at trivia games, particularly those dealing with pop culture. I have been a Phone a Friend on more then one occasion when one finds themselves in need of an expert.

In college, one of my friends called me at 2 a.m. during an extremely heated game of Saved by the Bell trivia. Everyone was stumped trying to recall the name of the pop star that Zack kissed in a middle school episode. I knew not only her stage name but her real name as well (for the record it was Stevie/Colleen)

I am going through my mental files right now and here is some of the crazy stuff that seems permanently lodged in my head:

• 24 x 30: the measurements of the door my mother needed at Grossmans for the house on Rowley Street. We moved out of that house about 15 years ago.
• Flintheart Glomgold: Scrooge McDuck’s Scottish nemesis on Duck Tales
• My ex boyfriend’s phone number which I have not dialed in about three and a half years
• My high school locker combination
• “I am a cog in the wheel of civilization”: What Gail B told me to tell my history teacher freshman year of high school in response to the question of “what are you”
• The words to pretty much every Bon Jovi song ever recorded
• My junior prom date’s birthday: March 23rd
• The first time I shaved my legs: I was in 6th grade and wearing a white jumpsuit with black polka dots. I was on my way to a choral concert and I slipped and fell down the driveway, skinned my knee and got a big hole in my nylons
• “No weezing the juice!”
• I beat TLIV when we both had pocket aces
• A cheerleading dance to the song Everybody Walk the Dinosaur
• He-Man was He-Man by the Powers of Gray Skull
• Gray was the word I spelled wrong in 2nd grade to ruin my 100% average. I cried because I didn’t get a giant red paper clip as a reward

This is just a sample of what I’ve got stored in the RAM upstairs. I can call up this type of information at will.

However, I don’t remember what I wore to work today. Every time I am in Target, I have no idea what I needed there. I can’t even remember who I wrote down for Secret Santa two hours ago.

Poats tells stories of our childhood and I am convinced that we lived with separate families. I remember when Pooh pulled the Pogo Ball out from underneath me…maybe because I am still pissed about that…

Sometime I really just wish I could reprogram that part of my brain to delete some of this useless knowledge and replace it with something meaningful.

I mean do I really need to know the tagline for Screech’s Secret Spaghetti Sauce?? “The sauce you can have but the secret, she’s-a-mine!”