tuesday's geek salad and the ping pong mystery

Well today I had the pleasure of walking my Grandson in his pram up and down a high street for the very first time! It was a great new experience!

I'm now planning ahead and looking forward to discussing such serious matters with him as which cheese the moon's actually made of, are Superfast faster than Hot Wheels and how would you describe the inside of a ping pong ball!

This latter mystery was an earnest matter for me as a Secondary School student in 1973. My English Teacher set it as my detention work instead of writing out 'I will not shout in the English corridor' one hundred times! He thought it would be more educational!

Aged 13 I no doubt waxed ad nauseum about the confined space, the shackled void and the circular prison therein. I was quite a verbose young boy.

However, I recently experienced something which might have added to my source material for the essay, material of a more practical nature. A table tennis game I was playing resulted in a crushed ball. I was gutted but my winning opponent said that I shouldn't worry. There was an easy remedy to a flattened lobe. Simply place the ball in a cup of boiling water and see what happens!

I did just that and the ball instantly popped back into shape! I wuz amazed! My erudite ping ponging partner explained that the air trapped inside the ball had simply expanded and pushed out the dent!

A fabulous bit of knowledge that. My own transferable knowledge is less practical but did manage to impart some iconic nonsense to the children of friends, the classic can-you-fold-some-paper-more-than-7-times challenge. It was a hit with them and they proceeded to try to fold countless A4 sheets 8 times, which naturally they never could. All generations of children know this and now they do.

Its a good job I didn't introduce them to the eat-a-whole-packet-of-cream-crackers-without-having-a-drink challenge! Then again, I haven't tried it either!

Some challenges arise organically. Take for instance tooth picks. These wooden stakes are a god-send to me after a bacon sarni but locating them in the supermarket is far less clear. The Tesco shop assistant sent us to the Dental shelves first. Nope, no tooth picks there. Next she sent us to the hardware aisle where the similarly wooden matches were. Nope, none there either. 

It was Missus Moonbase who then thought out of the box and cried 'Cocktail sticks!'. A light went on in the Shop Assistant's brain and we hot footed it to another aisle. 'They're here of course with the Party Supplies!". Of course!

Do you experience flashes of arcane knowledge and daily revelation readers?