Everything

I decided this year to learn a little bit about everything. Not a lot. A little. The amount where you can ruin a dinner party but not fix a sink. I know why the sky is blue. I do not know what my wife does. I know it involves a laptop and a tone of voice.

The problem with a little knowledge is that it has no idea it is little. I read one article about bridges and now I cannot drive over one without saying hmm. My wife asked what hmm meant. I said fatigue. She said yes, she was tired of this. We were talking about different things, which is the whole bit, actually.

I know the Aztec Empire is younger than Oxford University. I bring this up constantly. Nobody has ever asked. I have stopped waiting for them to ask. I now say it the way other people say bless you: automatically, to strangers, after a pause.

Here is what a little about everything gets you. You are the smartest man at every party for exactly eleven minutes. After eleven minutes someone asks a follow-up question. There is no follow-up. There is only the next topic, which I also know eleven minutes of. I am not a conversationalist. I am a playlist.

I'm the smartest man at every party and the only one nobody calls back.