The world is a confusing place. There are myriad things I’ll never understand. In my simple-minded confusion, I wonder how I’ve made it to pensionable age with such gaping chasms in my general knowledge.
Why do people buy gigantic four-wheel-drives solely for traversing the inner suburbs and blundering around harassing small cars in supermarket car parks? These behemoths are for crossing the Nullarbor and herding wildebeest. Yet they rarely leave the suburbs.
What is ‘face primer’? My face was in its prime thirty years ago and trust me, no unguent exists with the power to recall those halcyon days. A primer begs the question of the undercoat and then the whole paint job.
I’m baffled – no, annoyed – when the weather person announces: tomorrow the temperature will be 24 degrees but it will feel like 19 degrees! How does she know how it will feel to me? And while we’re on the weather, what exactly is the Southern Oscillating Index (SOI). Why does it oscillate (show me) and what do I care?
Also, what happened to the hole in the ozone layer? Remember when we all huddled around fretting about it? Where did it go? Has it moved? How do you relocate a hole?
I don’t really understand the Solar System. Don’t get me wrong … I pretend to. But even the sun and the moon confuse me, no matter how many people try to explain using various-sized balls and torches. I don’t understand asteroids. Why do they always land in uninhabited areas. Surely it’s just a matter of time before one lands on my back deck, in my kitchen or on my solar hot water panel.
Wine. I drink gallons of the stuff but its current serving arrangements – huge glass, thimbleful of wine – perplex me. And a glass (thimbleful) of wine costs the equivalent of the GDP of St Kitts and Nevis. How did that happen? My only solution is to keep drinking and stop thinking.
There’s so much technology I don’t get. But you know what? I don’t think it matters. Because luckily, by the time you come close to understanding a particular tech phenomenon, the world has moved on and the elusive device or technology has become obsolete.
Like, I never understood faxes. Thank god they’ve been superseded. An online dictionary describes a fax as the ‘telephonic transmission of scanned-in printed material (text or images), usually to a telephone number associated with a printer or other output device.’ Even writing that made my heart race, my palms sweat and my mind teeter off towards another plane of consciousness.
Likewise sin, co-sin, tan and exponential function. Is that calculus? Who uses this stuff and what for?
I don’t understand crypto-currency. Does it really exist? Is it the same as Bitcoin and should I buy some?
I don’t understand superannuation. But then, neither does Julie Bishop or any politician so I’m in good company.
Donald Trump’s hair. This man is seriously rich and that’s the best hair he can manage? To be honest, I don’t understand anything about the Donald.
Entropy. Someone explained it to me once. I may have understood it at the time – I’m sure I nodded – but I think I was drunk.
Which lever on the water cooler –white or blue –produces the coldest water? Why are there two levers?
Superfoods, bottled water, the’ onesie’, fake fingernails, the Nicer Dicer or anything on Spree TV – the list goes on.
Then of course, there’s the phenomena that includes Pauline Hansson and Jackie Lambie. You can add others – Barnaby Joyce, perhaps. Elon Musk. The Pope. Caitlin Jenner. Perhaps these folk are the embodiment of all which defies understanding.
Sue Wighton 