(This originally appeared in Brutarian Quarterly #54; for a while I wrote a column there about ignorance in general and my ignorance in specific. It was a lot of fun and I figure I’ll post them here now and again.)
BROMANCE IS REAL
Episode Eight: Ignorance for the Win!
My wife teaches me things every day, alleviating the huge welter of my ignorance little by little. Admittedly, most of this education concerns my many, many failings, but hell, ignorance of something is ignorance, and through her violent and painful lessons I emerge a smarter—and slightly anemic—man.
Sometimes, though, these lessons are a little more general, if no less painful. Like, for example, the following recent example:
ME: Wha? Where am I?
THE DUCHESS: On the couch. Watching TV.
ME: Wha? What is. . .what is that?
THE DUCHESS: This is a television show called Bromance.
ME: . . .I wish now I could have remained ignorant of this show.
THE DUCHESS: Too late! HEY! Keep those eyes open or I break out the clamps.
ME: Yes’m.
Bromance was a show on MTV starring Brody Jenner, son of former Olympic star and current plastic surgery victim Bruce Jenner. The show was all about Brody trying to choose a new best friend. The reasons why he needs a new best friend and why we’re imagined to care are difficult to explain if you aren’t forced to watch this sort of terrible, terrible TV show in the first place, but, sadly, I now know all about Mr. Jenner and his awful show. I am, sadly, no longer ignorant about Bromance. Pray for me.
Of course, you never know—this unwanted knowledge of Bromance might come in handy. Bizarre and impossible as it might sound at first blush, you have to remember the fact that none of us know what’s coming—there are no spoilers in life. So who can say that Bromance might not someday save my life? No one can say, that’s who. As far as any of you can prove, knowledge of Bromance could certainly save my life someday.
####
This brings us to the solemn and immense subject of our own collective meta-ignorance: None of us, simply put, have any idea what’s going to happen, either to us personally or to the universe in general. We’re always lagging a second or so behind actual events as information from our nerve endings travels along our sluggish and badly maintained nervous system to our brains; by the time you realize you’ve just been turned into slurry by a bus, you’re already dead (which leads to an interesting thought experiment—since you only know you’ve survived this particular second of time a second later, how can you possibly ever die, since you’re always one second ahead?). You never know if today is your day to eat some flesh-eating bacteria, have a piano dropped on you, or be loitering within 2,000 miles of Yellowstone National Park when the supervolcano under it erupts, destroying everything in its path.
Now, everyone knows—or thinks they know—that we’re all going to die. I can still remember that day about a decade ago when for some reason this finally slipped into place and I realized it with the full force of certainty. Before that, I’d still had something of the child’s certainty in forever—the belief that the universe had only sprung into being when I opened my eyes for the first time, and thus I could never actually pass from its borders. But the beauty of our meta-ignorance is that we don’t really know. We don’t know squat. Maybe you’re dying right now, while reading this article (sad), or maybe you’re a genetic freak who will live forever. Maybe you’ll be the one standing in a wheat field somewhere when the super-advanced race of alien ants descends in their brightly-colored warships, and when the Ant Ambassador emerges with his Staff of Authority and informs you that if broadcasts of Bromance do not re-commence immediately the Ant Lords will decimate our planet, and you will either be able to strike up a friendly conversation about Bromance, thus forging a friendship between our races forever, or you won’t, irritating the Ant Ambassador into ordering a extinction-level missile attack on our quivering planet.
You just never know.
Which is why, of course, you should embrace every possibility to learn new things and acquire new skills—to remove ignorance. Not so you can be the Trivial Pursuit champion or the annoying know-it-all who complains vocally at movies set in the past because they have the wrong type of shoes on the extras, but because you never know what’s going to save you or your loved ones. I am constantly reminded of this when watching or reading entertainments—or real-life memoirs—where characters survive by their wits, which often include vast areas of common-sense knowledge I lack. Or knowledge I once had but have forgotten. For example, forest survival skills.
A few years ago, my wife and I and another couple took a short vacation hiking in the mountains. Nothing drastic, a nice cabin and some easy, well-marked trails. We bought cold-weather gear because it was winter and struck out from the cabin in the early morning. The hike up the mountain was fun—not too difficult, even for a blubbery, out-of-shape man such as myself. When we got to our destination, which was not far up or hard to get to, however, both my wife and I experienced a sudden uncomfortable hypothermia, our hands and feet numb and throbbing. Our friends were fine, but we felt pretty crappy all of a sudden. My wife, whose best reaction to emergencies, as it turns out, would be to pass out and be carried like luggage, went storming back down the trail, with me racing after her on aching knees, pleading for her to slow down.
When we reached a fork in the path, my wife insisted we go left, despite my mild objection that I was pretty sure we’d come from the right. I turned out to be correct, but from this point on we were both a little disoriented and worried—visions of surviving the evening in the snow and wind flashing through our minds.
Now, I was a Boy Scout. I was an Eagle Scout, despite constant disbelieving e-mails from other Eagle Scouts who like to quiz me on Scout Lore because they can’t believe a drunken, profanity-laden idiot like me was an Eagle Scout. I’ve camped out in the woods. I’ve tied knots, built fires, and created winter shelters from fallen branches and old leaves. Really. Of course, I’ve forgotten most of this in the ensuing 20 years, so when panting my way through the forest in the middle of winter I was struggling to remember some old scout lore that would help us, and failing utterly. My wife, sensing Fail, refused to believe that I had any knowledge whatsoever that might help us and continued to storm forward, ignoring my pleas. Eventually I did convince her that I could, at least, read a map and compass to confirm we were heading in the right direction, and she paused for a few minutes while I did so. However, my memory of map-reading was pretty dim and I ended up even more confused, which resulted in the wife decided, apparently, to leave me behind in an effort to save herself.
As it turned out, we were going in the right direction, and a short time later we were back in safety. No thanks to my re-formed ignorance of survival skills. To this day my wife uses the phrase what are you going to do, build us a shelter as a withering comeback to any assertion of competence on my part.
The point is, you never know what’s going to be important. Calculus? Sure, seems pretty useless when you’re in high school. And it has remained useless to me in the ensuing two decades. But will it always be useless? Or will I someday be sitting in an Ant-Overlord spaceship with the controls set for the heart of the sun, cursing the fact that I’ve allowed my calculus skilz to wither away? You simply can’t say for sure. And you can’t learn everything, can you? So all you can do is pay attention to everything you’re exposed to, and hope that someday even something like Bromance will come in handy.