T H O U G H T S
FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT
LIKE MANY OTHE R
people, I am a trivia fan;
or as others prefer to call
No One Needs to Know This
me, “A know it all.” I don’t think
I am, and I doubt that I could
ever win a round of Jeopardy.
The interesting thing about
my type of so called “trivia” is
that some of it is factual and
relatively easy to prove, while
a lot of it is urban legend with
as good a chance of being false,
as it is true and most of it is not
worth knowing. For instance,
I’ve been told that Parker Bros.
prints more money for their
Monopoly game than the U.S.
Treasury does; but I don’t tend
to believe it, because it doesn’t
seem possible to me. I’ve also
been told that Fred and Wilma
Flintstone were the first couple
to be shown in bed together on
a primetime TV show, due to
early censorship rules; but, if
you count cartoon characters as
people, I can see that this could
be true. Skeptic that I am, I have
trouble accepting things that I am told
that I don’t believe are true. For me, real
trivia is factual, in that it can be proven. It
is a fact that honey does not spoil, but I
question whether it is the only food that
doesn’t. It is a fact that if you multiply
111,111,111 by 111,111,111, you will get
12345678987654321; and it is easy to
demonstrate if you have a computer that
will extend to 17 numbers. Likewise, if
you count from zero, the first number to
have an “a” in it is one thousand. No
doubt about this statement. Some truths
of wounds received in battle.
Some sculptors obviously have
chosen to ignore this tradition
or simply never heard it.
My personal favorite bit of
trivia is that the name for the
game of golf is the acronym
for its original name, where it
was invented, in Scotland. That
name was “Gentlemen Only,
Ladies Forbidden.” Even if it
isn’t true, I like to believe it,
as it seems to be supported by
the fact that one of society’s
most vile words is the acronym
for the English legal charge
of “For Unlawful Carnal
Knowledge.”
My final bit of trivia for you
is that it is impossible for
humans to lick their elbows.
Now that 75-percent of you
have tried to do so and failed,
I suspect that you will include
this bit of trivia in your memory
bank. Lessons learned are so
much longer lasting than words
spoken; except, of course, for my
GRAM
statement that 84-percent of all statistics
are made up. Believe it or not, it is true.
9
EDITOR’S NOTE: Aaron Fodiman, our
publisher and editor, is a strange bird, indeed;
but he lives with a lovely woman, his wife
Margaret Word Burnside, who watches him
closely and keeps him from going over the
edge.
By Aaron R. Fodiman
I don’t know if this is an ad for mass transit
or for an exercise program.
are just plays on words, such as if, “I am”
is the shortest sentence, then the longest
sentence may be “I do.”
While some trivia is questionable, most
people accept the statements as true, as
in the urban legend that the first novel
written on a typewriter was Mark Twain's
Tom Sawyer. Others are generally true,
but often there are exceptions to the basic
statement. An example would be that when
you see a statue in the park with a rider
on a horse and one of the horse's legs is
in the air, that the rider died as a result
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE 123