Things my wife hates about me: trivial pursuits

Third in an occasional series of things I do that inexplicably annoy my wife, Carissa. See posts about my beard and movie blurting here and here.

I know things. It’s one of my super powers. Like estimating the right sized Tupperware container for leftovers, finding liquor stores in new towns, and getting the most out of a tube of toothpaste. I know things that regular people neither notice nor remember and I store them in files and folders embedded in my brain for later recall. Not everyone appreciates this gift. And by “not everyone,” I mean my wife, Carissa. She is smart and intellectually curious, but for reasons I can’t pretend to fathom, completely fails to appreciate the knowledge that I routinely attempt to pass her way.

For instance, just the other night we were watching a high-brow, art house film on HBO, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, with our youngest daughter. During the movie, I noticed one of the characters, Steve the Pirate, was played by the same actor (Alan Tudyk), who played the vile, racist Phillies manager in the Jackie Robinson movie, 42. (Also appearing briefly in Dodgeball was Hank Azaria, who used to be married to Helen Hunt and who is the voice of Moe the bartender on The Simpsons, but a lot of people know that. Fewer people, though, know that Helen Hunt appeared with the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in the movie Twister and that Philip Seymour Hoffman later appeared in Patch Adams with BOOM! . . . Alan Tudyk.) When I shared my realization that Steve the Pirate was the same actor who crudely taunted Jackie Robison in a movie we had recently watched together, Carissa shushed me.

Wow. I just discovered cinematic gold and I got the "shush." Don’t be discouraged, I tell myself whenever this happens. I cling to the belief that eventually Carissa will realize my value as a source for all sorts of information that might come in useful sometime. I wonder, for instance, if she knows that:

• The shortest verse in the Bible (King James Version) is John 11:35 (Jesus wept.)?
• The same plant produces both coriander (the dried seeds) and cilantro (leaves)?
• The odd little neighbor boy (Dill Harris) in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is based on Lee’s real-life childhood friend Truman Capote (who was later played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the movie, Capote)?
• Freshwater eels are “catadromous” fish, meaning they migrate from freshwater streams to sea to spawn (as opposed to “anadromous” fish such as salmon, that migrate from sea to freshwater to spawn)?
• The white stuff on chicken poop is more chicken poop?
• Nearly all the brewing hops in the United States are grown in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon?
• The “S” in Harry S Truman’s name didn’t stand for anything? That Truman shares the same birthday as me (May 8)? That May 8 is also recognized as National Outdoor Intercourse Day (slogan: Hoorah, Hooray for the Eighth of May!)? That the American actor Alan Tudyk and the fourth American president, James Madison, share the same birthday (March 16)? 

I could go on. And on. This is fascinating shit, am I right? But at home, I can get no traction. It’s like Carissa at some point adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward my ability to recognize and recall seemingly random bits of information and pull them together in ways that both enrich and enlighten.

If I’m honest, her aversion may have started way back in the early days of our relationship, when she innocently joined me and my brothers in a game of Trivial Pursuit while we visited family for Christmas. In retrospect, I should have warned her that it would get ugly, that we considered Trivial Pursuit a contact sport and there would be taunting, bullying, mocking – a lot of trash talk and nerd aggression. Not a lot of warmth on the sofa-sleeper in the living room we shared later that night.

Or maybe it was from our days in Wyoming where I spent a year as a graduate assistant for Professor Robert’s History of Wyoming class while finishing a master’s degree. Wyoming is a big state and places are few and far between. Road trips by necessity were frequent and long. To pass time I filled the hours with fascinating bits of local history. . . .It’s called Independence Rock because Oregon Trail settlers often reached this spot by July 4 . . . Tom Horn was hanged in that building right there . . . Rock Springs was once the most ethnically diverse town in the entire United States. . .There’s the Teapot Dome that was at the center of the Harding administration’s Teapot Dome scandal . . . look, another pronghorn! Did you know that “antelope” is really a misnomer, that they are more closely related to goats?  . . . Did you know that . . . At some point without warning Carissa would snap and tell me to shut the fuck up before she flung herself from the moving vehicle to escape being trapped with Cliff Clavin in her own personal hell.

 

Whoa now. Stop harshing my mellow. Cliff Clavin was the blow-hard postal worker on Cheers! who was a tedious doofus and who annoyed everyone at the bar with his insipid droning on about “little know facts.” Me, on the other hand. Um. Hmm. The point is my droning is certainly not insipid. Right?

Anyway, speaking of Wyoming. Did you see the recent Disney movie Frozen? The one about the princess in the Scandinavian wastelands? Did you know that Disney sent several animators and special effects specialists to Wyoming to walk, run, and fall in deep snow while wearing various garments that characters in the movie would be wearing? Also, did you know that the American actor Alan Tudyk was the voice of Duke Weselton in the movie? 

Probably not. It's a little know fact.