Last Saturday I decided to treat myself to a Starbucks coffee, a bike ride to get me there, and some Kindle time reading a new book. Everything was going great until Rain man dropped by. I took me only a minute to realize that I had met this guy about a year prior (during my last quiet vacation to Starbucks). Like most people of his…ummm…type, he didn’t really care that I was reading a book or that the other two guys he decided to regale with his abilities were conversing. His shtick was the following:
- He could tell you the number of counties in any state of the union
- What day of the week any date that you gave him fell on.
- Year that each state joined the Union.
He proceeded to ask me and these other two guys a million questions simply so he could answer them and theoretically amaze everyone. The problem is that I didn’t want to be amazed and I’m also a skeptic. I theorized that all of this guys “knowledge” could be had by most people if they decided to waste a lot of time memorizing useless facts. What day of the week was March 13th, 1967? Monday. You know how I know? Google. I didn’t have to spend the better part of a portion of my life figuring out how the calendar works and factoring in leap years.
I kind of felt sorry for the guy and especially sorry for the other two guys as I clicked the power off on my book and said goodbye. I realized on the bike ride home that these “Rain men” are not so cool anymore since the proliferation of the internet and instant answers to everything. Like me, others are not as impressed that off the top of his head he knew that there were 102 counties in Illinois. Oh well…chalk it up to another lost art form humbled by the internet.
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