As Maria and I drove down the road one day recently, I had an epiphany. I\u2019m wasting my brain, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. We had the radio playing and a song came on. I couldn\u2019t even tell you now what the song was, which is one of the biggest tragedies of the story.<\/p>\n
But at the time, I not only knew the artist and title, but I knew pretty much every lyric. And I hadn\u2019t heard the song in years.<\/p>\n
Why are those lyrics taking up space in my brain?<\/p>\n
This is not really a new development. My mother used to tell me that I would do much better in math if I spent as much time on my homework as I did figuring out sports statistics.<\/p>\n
Besides my baseball knowledge, I worked at Harborplace in Baltimore for several years and had to calculate food prices without using the register.<\/p>\n
That skill does have an outstanding practical application now. Maria takes me shopping with her so I can calculate sale prices and tax in my head while she looks for a bargain. She admits that she needs paper to figure out 20 percent of something.<\/p>\n
Mom just didn\u2019t get it though. Calculating batting averages for your Strat-o-Matic baseball league is way more fun that geometry. I know. I checked. Thankfully, my wife did well at geometry, so I\u2019m off the hook there.<\/p>\n
I was just a kid back then. I had an excuse. Now I\u2019m an adult (well, chronologically at least) with a family and a career. I should be past instant recall of song lyrics from the 1980s.<\/p>\n
The thing about all of this is that there is no conscious decision with much of this. It just happens. In other words, I really shine when I don\u2019t have to think. That doesn\u2019t bode well for me as a parent.<\/p>\n
I can see the scene now in five years. Bridget comes up to me and asks me to help her with her science homework. All I can come up with are the lyrics to a bunch of Go-Go\u2019s songs.<\/p>\n
That should be revered in some culture. However, I don\u2019t think teachers will appreciate my daughter\u2019s memorization of \u201cOur Lips Are Sealed\u201d as much as I do.<\/p>\n
This goes beyond song lyrics unfortunately. Lines from movies, insignificant facts. I\u2019m surprised some piece of trivia hasn\u2019t crowded the last piece of common sense out of my brain by now.<\/p>\n
Some of these skills come in handy when I play Trivial Pursuit or need to tally up the score in Scrabble, but I\u2019m lost beyond that.<\/p>\n
The biggest tragedy is that I haven\u2019t found my way onto some silly game show to make use of all this \u201cknowledge.\u201d I\u2019m sure one of them exists, I\u2019m just too lazy to go find one and actually try out.<\/p>\n
I could be the Ken Jennings of the show if it focused on song lyrics, quick basic math skills and funny lines from television and movie comedies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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