I’m one of those guys who has a head for useless facts, you know? I’ve noticed that a lot of Dopers seem to be like this.
I can tell you who won medals at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, the names of Hitler’s dogs, who played Lou Gehrig in the movie of his life… I can remember all sorts of trivia, on the condition that it’s trivia that won’t help me make any money, you know?
Weirdly enough, my father-in-law is the same kind of person. What’s worse, we’re both history buffs. This has led to any number of conversations where the family’s together, and something will come up in the subject that leads one of us to make a comment about history…
…and then the other will pipe up, “Yeah, and…”
…and the next thing you know, he and I will be discussing the details of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift while the rest of the family is looking confusedly at each other. Huh?
This led my daughter, when she was younger, to make an observation that between me and her Grandpa, we pretty much knew everything. Either we both knew it, or one of us did; anything one didn’t know, the other one would know. This made it extremely handy when both of us were in the room, if you wanted to know what a word meant, or you were trying to write a paper for History or English Lit; not only could we tell you what you wanted to know, it was a fair bet that one of us would have the book on hand, so you could easily fudge your bibliography.
Now, this makes my wife a little nuts. I don’t know why. My wife’s far from stupid herself, and has an uncanny knack for watching a given movie or TV show, analyzing the narrative, and correctly determining how it will end… no longer than halfway through it. I’ve always found this amazing. But it makes her crazy that if her father and I are in a room, and you ask any given question, we will answer in unison… or only one of us will speak… but never *neither * of us.
She’s tried to catch us out, more than once. So far, one of us has always been able to answer the question.
Now, what’s worse… I have a strong strain of Irish in the blood, and it’s been said that not only did my ancestors kiss the blarney stone more than once, but that we actually hacked OFF a hunk of it, ground it up, and fed it to our young at some point, with their morning oatmeal. And I will admit to a bit of a wicked streak when it comes to leading folks down the primrose path, on occasion.
This has led to some situations where my wife will ask a question of me… and listen patiently to my answer… and then remark, “You’re b.s’ing, aren’t you?”
Usually about the point in the story where the Nazi frogmen burst into the room, guns drawn, if you know what I mean.
So… basically, what we have here is a situation where you have two guys, who, between them, have access to all earthly knowledge… but, on occasion, one of them might be lying through his teeth, just to see how far along in the story he can get before you catch on, right?
Yeah, I know. Makes my poor wife nuts.
Anyway, the other night, we were lying in bed reading, side by side. I don’t remember what I was reading. She was reading The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. And at one point, she rolled over, and said, “Honey… what does lebensraum mean?”
“Uhmm, German,” I replied. “Means ‘space to expand’ or ‘room in which to live’. Generally used in conjunction with colonization. Literal translation, living room.”
She sat bolt upright, and hissed, “How the hell do you know that?”
I jumped, a little. “Um… well… it’s German,” I fumbled.
“Howthehell did you pull German vocabulary out of nowhere?”
Now, at this point, my sense of mischief kind of got the better of me. “You mean, you don’t speak German?” I said.
“NO, you miserable rat-bastard, and neither do you!” she snarled. “Now howthehell did you know what Lebensraum means?”
“Ach, ein fang,” I remarked. “Ich bin ein Berliner. Achtung! Vorsicht, bissiger Hund. Angebot leer, wo verboten. Keine Früchte oder Gemüse hinter diesem Punkt.”*
“Dammit! There is no way we’ve been married for ten years, and I just never noticed that you speak German! You are RECITING, not speaking! Now how the hell do you know what *Lebensraum * means?!?”
I sighed. Looked like it was going to have to be the boring old truth, after all. “All right,” I remarked. “Remember when I told you about how I went nuts over model kits, when I was nine?”
“Right,” she said, suspiciously.
“And how I built military model kits, and how I got interested in World War II, looking for pictures, so I could build them to look just like the real thing?”
“Right,” she said, suspiciously.
“And how I wound up reading all this stuff about World War II, Hitler, the causes of the war, and so on?”
“Right,” she said, suspiciously.
“Well, lebensraum was part of Hitler’s official policy. One of his favorite words. Pops up quite a bit in some of his speeches, right up there with “aryan.” The lebensraum policy was basically why he wanted to clean out the Slavic countries, wipe out the Slavs, and replace 'em with good Aryan Germans. Space to live. Colonization room. He used the word quite a bit. That’s why I remember it. From my studies.”
She looked at me a moment, weighing my words and demeanor against the possibility that I might simply have regrouped and chosen yet another primrose path. “Thank you,” she said, finally. “That fits with the context. The author here has chosen the word “lebensraum” in reference to what white settlers did to the Indians, Manifest Destiny, and all that.”
“Ah,” I remarked. “Makes sense. Same basic thing.”
She cooled down. We returned to our books.
After a long while, she asked me, “What does aubergine* * mean?”
“Um,” I said. “I don’t know. Not a clue. Haven’t the foggiest. No comprendo. I–”
And then she beat the crap out of me.
Women. Who understands them?
*“Wow, a beginning,” I remarked. “I am a jelly doughnut. Attention! Beware of the dog. Offer void where prohibited. No fruits or vegetables past this point.”
**Aubergine: European word for “eggplant.”
