I’ve been wondering…where exactly did unca Cecil come from? No ordinary human is that smart. Could he be some omnipotent being from another galaxy who has come here to fend off some bad stuff? Is Cecil even a person? Could Cecil in actuallity be some secret organization bent on taking over the world? Can it be that I have too much free time on my hands? We may never know…
According to Paul S. Piper–who claimed to be “A grade-school chum of Cecil Adams”–in his “What makes Cecil Adams the world’s greatest reference librarian”, from the February, 1995 (i]American Libraries*: “How did he get in this profession? Reportedly it was a divine callling, with the archetype of Cecil, a relative of the Norse god Odin, coming to him and commanding him to ‘take the helm’”.
This explanation has always made perfect sense to me.