Trivia and singing

I am a fount for useless, or nearly useless, knowledge. That’s right I’m a trivia magnet. My brain is stuff with weird and obscure info that begs the question, “Why is that stuck in my head?” But, I’m crap with names, something that would be really useful to remember. Why does the universe work like that?

I know that the chief export of Bolivia is tin, there is a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty in Paris, Sam Houston is the only person to have been the a US governor, a US senator and the president of a foreign county, “Doing a drug deal” is slang in the military for the difficult and arduous process of getting around rules and regulation with permission, there is a variety of octopus that can be found in trees on the northern Pacific coast, and there’s just a ton of stuff like that crammed into the corners of my brain. I can’t explain why how gets stuck there, but there it is.

One time I was talking to someone about California. This person mentioned that California was to the west, we were in Washington at the time. I smiled and said don’t you mean south. He laughed at me and said everyone knew it was to the west. Now I may have been confused a time or two about which direction was north, but I’ve never misplaced a major state.

Then there are the things I can’t do, like sings and remember names. Singing is my greater sorrow. I’d love to be able to sing. I wouldn’t have to be a great singer. I just want to sing well enough that I could do karaoke without embarrassing myself or being booed off the stage. You know just well enough that dog don’t howl and run for the hills with their tails between their legs. It’s a hard burden to bear to when you have music in your soul yearning to break free and celebrate, has to be restrained. It’s a sad, sad thing. (I know, don’t you feel sorry for me?)

I got into one of those “what if…” conversations; what if you could give up one talent to gain another. That seemed like a fair question, but the more I thought about it the more I didn’t want to give up any of my talents to gain a decent singing voice. As weird as being a trivia magnet is, I’d rather keep that then give it up. It’s just a part of who I am. A know-it-all that can’t carry a tune.