My father had a few things he always wanted me and my sisters to know. These facts were drilled into us at the supper table, in the car, or at dinner parties to impress the relatives. What purpose it served to know these tidbits or what help they would bring me later in life was a total mystery at age 7, and still remains rather unclear at 21, but I haven't forgotten them and probably never will.
Speed of Light: 186,000 miles per second
Speed of Sound: 760 miles per hour
Alphabet Backwards: ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA (I admit not as impressive in writing, but you should see us in action).
I admit, as the years went by, this knowledge became something of which I was rather proud, or at the very least, over-willing to share with others. My sisters and I all had the joyous opportunity to flaunt our speed of light factoid in a physics class or two (we all had the same teacher though, so he was ready for it the second time around). After sharing this, it was of course followed by stares from our classmates asking "How do you know that?" While deep down I was super proud of my knowledge, and felt superior to all my intellectually inferior peers, I would always respond with something like "My dad drills me with it at the dinner table. I know, it's weird." Not wanting to look even more uncool than I already was. Believe it or not I even once had the opportunity to share my Backwards Alphabet skills in high school...that just made people uncomfortable.
I believe the learning process started when my eldest sister was put into the "gifted" program. (You know, they have the gifted program for the super smart, special-ed for the not so smart, and "over crowded, zero attention school" for the regular kids, the ones who try really hard and get good grades but just aren't "special" enough, I bet you can tell where I fell...but that's another entry.) My father knew she had a gift and wanted to fill her brain with all the useless knowledge he possessed. In between chews and Seinfeld commercials; Alphabet lessons commenced. My twin sister and I refused to be left out, (we are attention hogs) so we began trying our hardest to learn along, to prove to our parents that we were special too. Let me tell you, once you have a sibling who is labeled as gifted, well there goes all hopes of just coasting through life, it is ON.
Eventually we all got it memorized, along with the rest of our useless knowledge. It wasn't really all that hard, but it hasn't left my brains since, not for a second. I don't think I could forget it if I wanted to. I will go to my grave knowing those numbers and letters. All for my dad really. He taught us what he could, what he was proud of knowing, and it would just be simply rude to forget it. Thanks dad. He is one strange guy, but I'm happy to know him.
Socially Awkward Reason #1: My Dad forced me to memorize useless facts as a child.
