You're Telling Me More Than I Want To Know

My childhood was infused with information.  Mom is one of those rare people who keeps a dictionary, a thesaurus, and 250 pounds of encyclopedias handy, in case she needs to look something up.  She often needs to look something up, and the rest of us have always benefited from her efforts.  She is the Reference Goddess.

 

Now, my father has always been interested in the details and mechanics of how things work (and sports trivia).  For example, many people -- not just dairy people -- know that cows have four stomachs, and of course my father had to know this because he was a dairyman.  But his interest in how things work often pushed him into territory that became treacherous for kids.  We learned, through pain and suffering, not to ask too many questions, because we would certainly get more than we bargained for.  Were any of us careless enough to ask why a cow has four stomachs, we could expect be drawn into a detailed conversation about cow biology, complete with charts and graphs done on paper napkins, and followed by a quiz.  (Just to show off, the cow's four stomachs are, in order of use, the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasum.)

 

I must not give you the idea that Dad's interests ended with bovinity, however.  Other major topics of discussion (and therefore pop quizzes) included the Giants, of both San Francisco and New York; the Forty-Niners, going all the way back to the Mesozoic Era; the Navy; World War II, including all aircraft and war ships; basic geometry; introductory principles of internal combustion engines; and how to make a perfect vanilla milkshake.

 

My head is filled with random facts absorbed from time spent with Dad.  Every once in a while one will leak out, like this jingle I've known all my life: "Better than his brother Joe, Dominic DiMaggio!"  I'll bet whoever wrote THAT little ditty feels pretty sheepish.  Or the fact that bees don't come out to work until the air temperature reaches about 60F.  Or how about this: Floyd Little of the 1960s-70s Denver Broncos used to prepare for games by drinking a bucket of blood in a darkened cage.  I kid you not, that's the story, but I Googled it six ways from Sunday and can't find any reference.  So sometimes Dad is wrong, apparently.

 

I am reminded of Dad's curiosity about things when I see him with my daughters.  The other day he patiently explained to Smedley how to properly draw a rabbit face.  "See?" he showed her.  "A rabbit's eyes are on the side of its head, not on the front of its head.  That's why, when you look straight at a rabbit, you see the profile of its eyes," he explained, indicating the bulge-y eyes he'd drawn.  "Do you know why rabbits' eyes are on the sides?" he asked my fidgeting child.  "Because they are prey.  They need to be able to see all around them to watch for predators, who want to eat them.  Predators, like owls or dogs or coyotes, have eyes facing forward."  Which explains this

 

and this

 

but not this.

 

The explanation of the hare lip was less riveting.

 

I drag my children through exactly the same kinds of Fun Fact Fests all the time.  Ultimately, they should come to appreciate it, as I have (though not before they've rolled their eyes at least 10,000 times).  It does beg the question of this story's title, though, "You're Telling Me More Than I Want To Know," which is one of Dad's favorite sayings.  He has failed for decades to see the irony.

 

So which parent am I most like?  Before you answer that, and in the interest of full disclosure, I fact-checked everything I put into this article.  Thank you, Google; thank you, Reference Goddess.

 

Gather up your charts and graphs; there will be a quiz.

Comments

[Rick's Cafe]

We are doomed to forever be our parents children - it's not all bad.

[Yummy Mommy]

Hilarious post, Laurie! I love the picture of um, what was that guy with the bulgy eyes name? Marty Feldman, I think.

My mom is also a Reference Goddess(love that title)and my dad used to pop quiz us - in fact he still does it. Just the other day he asked me what kind of tree a stump we were looking at had been (types of trees are one of his favorite pop quizzes). Luckily it happened to be the first kind of tree that I blurted out, usually it takes me a few tries.