Shellac and Dental Floss

Years ago, soon after I graduated from college, I was driving across the country with a friend, Matt. Along the way we listened to some of his Frank Zappa tapes. So it was that when we pulled into a gas station in Albuquerque, and the attendant told me he was “moving to Montana soon”, I had to ask, “To be a dental floss tycoon?”
 

You will not be surprised that all I got was a blank look.
 

And frankly, I would have given myself a blank look, too, if I hadn’t just been listening to the song. Despite having seen Zappa in concert when I was in high school, and having heard some of his songs at other times, I really don’t know much about him or his music. Basically I know just enough to say something that provokes a blank look in an Albuquerque gas station attendant.
 

This is true about so many things. I have a smattering of knowledge on many different subjects, but I’m sad to say there are very few concentrations. I know enough about writing to be able to teach it, and I know enough about teaching to be able to do it, but that about covers the areas where my knowledge has any depth.
 

I studied geology for four years in college and even worked in the field after graduation, but most of the time I’m reluctant to admit it because people then expect me to know something about it. I can identify some different types of rock, and I know just enough to understand why the Adirondacks are growing and how they can be such young mountains when their rock is incredibly old, but that’s about it.
 

One thing I do have is good grammar, but I don’t know the names of all the constructions, so when students ask me why something is wrong or right, I often struggle to explain it. In fact, what I generally do is act out the sentences to show why a particular piece of punctuation is so critical (because it just is!) Many years ago I got a job as the editor of a newspaper on the strength of my good grammar. For a year and a half I faked being a journalist, blundering through interviews and missing “scoops” left and right. But darn it, that paper was well edited! Amazingly, I did not get fired.

I feel like I squeak through life, knowing just barely enough to make it, though sometimes the knowledge I do (or did) have gets me in trouble. For example, when you’ve had four semesters of calculus, that may actually be a hindrance to figuring out how much plywood to order to cover a shed roof. It would have been a much simpler and I’m sure more accurate calculation if, instead of doing algebra, I had just drawn a picture and figured out how many 4 by 8 sheets were needed to fill the dimensions of the roof. Unfortunately, the confidence with which I put forth my calculation convinced my husband, so he was understandably mad when we had to go back to the lumber yard to get another sheet.
 

Luckily for me, I have a terrible memory. Very little of importance stays in it. That’s good because I easily forget the bad things that happen (like how mad Bruce was about the plywood). The bad news is that my daughter is constantly frustrated that I don’t remember what I told her five minutes earlier, let alone a day or a week ago. Trivia seems to last, though, and certain triumphs. For example, I will never forget being proven right when my husband doubted that the word “shellac” indicated that the substance was made from the shells of lac beetles. I don’t really know anything else about shellac, other than that people use it to protect wood. Or at least they used to. (Has it been replaced by polyurethane? Is shellac the same as lacquer? I’m assuming the “lac” part is the same…)
 

How much is it necessary to know in life, anyway? In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Albus Dumbledore has a “pensive”, a weird magical device in which he can deposit thoughts and memories so they don’t clutter up his brain. Nowadays people have smartphones to do that. I don’t have either, but truthfully, I don’t know if either would help me because the important thoughts would probably be gone before I could download them to the device. And just as before, all I’d be left with would be shellac and dental floss.