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Thursday, September 25, 2008

Yes, I am the Keeper of All Knowledge

It happens in all relationships. That moment when it becomes apparent that one of you has been chosen to be the Keeper of All Knowledge. How do you know if that person is you?

Question 1: Have you ever been asked "Where are my keys?"
  • If the answer is "No, I have never been asked this question" then the answer is, no, you are NOT in fact the Keeper of All Knowledge.
  • If the answer is "Yes" proceed to the next question.

Question 2: Do you know where the keys are?
  • If the answer is "No, where did you put them?" You are NOT the Keeper of All Knowledge. You are the Other Person. See below for enlightenment as to your position in the relationship.
  • If the answer is "No, I have no idea where the keys are." It means you have a way to go yet, young padawan of knowledge.
  • If the answer is "Yes" then congratulations, you are the Keeper of All Knowledge.


This knowledge will include EVERYTHING from the location of keys that do not belong to you to what was that strange beast that ran in front of the car the other night.

On the other night in question, my husband and I were driving along when this small furry beast zips across the road.
Beast: ZIP!
AG: Whoa! What the hell was that?
DB: I don't know. What kind of animal was it?

Now if you think that's an odd response to my question, you perhaps are not the Keeper of All Knowledge in your relationship. But are you familiar with this conversation?
You: Where are my keys?
Other Person: I don't know. Where did you put them?

Obviously, if you knew where you put them, you wouldn't ask, now would you? But the Other Person is not the Keeper of All Knowledge, so they cannot tell you. They can only ASK the questions, not answer them. (See, I told you enlightenment would follow.) This is why the Danish Boy asked me what animal it was, after I had already exclaimed "what the hell was that?" If the conversation with the keys is very familiar to you, but you are most certainly not the Other Person, you are probably the Keeper of All Knowledge in training. Here's a hint to get you on the path to further enlightenment: it does not matter if you can ever find your keys, as long as you always know where the Other Person's keys are.

The Keeper of All Knowledge has an important role in the relationship. You can be guilty of not knowing everything all the time, but you have to be able to pull answers out of your ass every now and then to keep your title.

So two nights ago, when the DB was reading the instructions for deep-freezer maintenance (in Danish, otherwise guess who would have read them already) and then began ranting about how there was no button for super-freeze, it was my job, nay my mission, to then walk over to the deep freeze and say "you mean this button right here that says 'super'?" And then push the button.

In his defense, the Danish word for super-freeze-button (which is a very long word that I can't pronounce let alone spell) is not in the least bit like the word "super" which was the label above the button. The "super" button also looked suspiciously like an indicator light.

But that's the job of the Keeper of All Knowledge, to know that sometimes an indicator light is really a button in disguise and that descriptions of items in manuals are often not at all like the real object.

Quite often I get phone calls from the DB asking very odd questions. Because, he says, it's easier to ask me than to google.

Yeah, it makes me all tingly too.

Hence our conversation in the car the other night.

So what was the animal that zipped across the road? Well, it could have been a European Polecat. It wouldn't be the first polecat we've seen.
I assure you, that is a picture of European Polecats and not ferrets. The going theory is that ferrets are the long domesticated versions of the polecat. They can breed and produce viable offspring. But this is probably not what we saw.

It was more likely a European Pine Marten.

It had the fox like tail and was very dark in color. See the puffy tail? The dark coloring? Isn't it cute??




Yes, I am the Keeper of All Knowledge.

1 comment:

  1. I, too, am the Keeper of All Knowledge. And sadly, not just in my relationship, but also for the entire staff of Susan's Place. They think I'm this walking Encyclopedia of All Knowledge Large and Small. And for an astounding number of things, this appears to be true. One of those things where even I don't know how much I know until someone asks me about something and I miraculously have the answer without so much as a batting an eyelash.

    And yet, there is still so much that I don't know that I wish I knew. I don't get these people who finish high school and then never pick up a book or use google for anything more celebrity gossip.

    ReplyDelete

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