Is This Something to Brag About?

family, happiness, humor, lessons learned, politics 2 Minutes

I’ve been on a crossword puzzle kick lately, after my wife had bought me a book of such puzzles. The puzzles are relatively easy, and only take about 10-15 minutes to complete, at least how I define complete. I might solve 95% of a puzzle and realize there’s no way I’ll ever solve for the last two or three clues. So I simply turn to the solution and then fill in the rest of the puzzle.

But completing such puzzles is not what I’m potentially bragging about.

In one of the puzzles I was doing today, the following clue appeared:

Porky Pig’s love

An answer came to mind immediately, and I checked if it was the right number of spaces. It was, so I filled in the answer, and after filling in a couple of the clues that were using some of those same letters, I was pretty confident I had answered correctly.

But then I started thinking, should I be proud of the fact that I can remember who was Porky Pig’s love, when sometimes I can’t remember who my two U.S. Senators are for the State of Pennsylvania, or who my U.S. Congressional representative is?

Or that I can’t remember the name of a student a day after I just had a half-hour Zoom call with him or her?

And a couple things I’ll never remember, no matter how many times I’ve been told.

I can never remember if red or white wine is the one that is meant to be kept cold.

And I can never remember what the proper way to slice a tomato is – do I turn it on its side or keep it with the stem facing up?

I have to ask my wife every time I do one of those tasks.

But Petunia. Her name will likely be with me to my final days. I wonder if somehow I was strangely attracted to her…

Most likely it’s simply a sign of what a wonderful childhood I had, especially Saturday mornings.

Who knew that spending a few hours every Saturday glued to a black and white TV set would pay off 55 years later?

Now I hope an upcoming crossword puzzle asks for Quick Draw McGraw’s sidekick, the name of his mask wearing alter-ego, or his biscuit loving dog.

And if you’re thinking I’m not ready for the New York Times crossword puzzle, you would be correct…

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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88 thoughts on “Is This Something to Brag About?”

  1. Well I’m impressed that you can remember her name, so I think it’s something to brag about.

    I can remember one of our senators, but the other became vice-president, and I can’t recall who took her place.

    One of my favorite Wacky Racer characters was Snidely Whiplash. He had a dog that quietly snickered at him, but I’m damned if I can remember his name. Any help with that?

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      1. I got the names wrong anyway. With the help of Wiki, I now remember that the name of the show was Wacky Races. And the character I’m referring to was named Dick Dastardly. His dog’s name was Muttley. (Snidely Whiplash was a Rocky & Bullwinkle character).

        There were only 17 episodes of Wacky Races, produced in 1968, so that may help explain why you never heard of it. I think you were born too early to be watching cartoons in 1968.

        If you’re interested, here’s a trailer of the cartoon, from youtube:

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      2. I can’t believe there were only 17 episodes; it left quite an impression in such a short time. Thanks for that clip; brought back good memories. It was good to see Penelope again… 🙂

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  2. The mind is a curious instrument. For what it’s worth, I knew Petunia, too. It seems like you’re hanging out with the right crowd.🤣 You may remember my recent post about my two teacher friends. Bill’s father-in-law used to tell him, “Bill, you know more useless s*** than anyone I know.”

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  6. So would you like a medal now? I remember Elmer Fudd’s name. 🙂
    It is crazy the things we can remember so easily!
    My husband enjoys crossword puzzles too. He will ask me some of the questions and there has been times when I know the answer and he doesn’t. That makes me proud.

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  8. His sidekick was a burro named Baba Looey. His alter ego was El Kabong. And his dog’s name was Snuffles. Yes, I was raised on Saturday morning TV. And now for the bonus round, Snidely Whiplash’s dog on Wacky Racers was named Muttley. So who can tell me where the secrets plans for the Mach 5 of Speed Racer fame are hidden?

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    3. Speed Racer was another classic; who can forget the theme song (well at least part of it 🙂 ) And I think it was Dick Dastardly, not Snidely, on Wacky Races. Snidely was on Dudley Do-Right, yet another classic show..

      They need to bring all these shows back…

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  9. we suffer from a bit of selective memory, for many reasons, certain things are permanently embedded, and others drift away with the wind. it has no connection to importance, what we should know, or any other logical reason, other than our brain chooses to grab onto these things and it has its own reasons for sorting what stays in the files from what is quickly dispensed into the trash.
    p.s. the sunday nyt puzzle is one of my favorite things and often these little tidbits of info will be useful there.

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    1. is it correct that the NYT puzzles get harder with each day, with Monday being the easiest, and Sunday being the hardest? So I’ve got a lot of work to do before I even think about the Sunday puzzle!

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      1. Saturday and Sunday are hardest but I love that the Sunday puzzle is bigger and like the challenge •
        It took a lot of practice and work before I could finish one and I wrote a post about the first one I ever finished. My daughters were laughing because I wrote teacher bits on it – good job, beth or something.

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      3. yes, but that helped me learn. I would do absolutely every answer I could, and then look up what I didn’t know. each time, i began to understand how the puzzle worked. kind of hard to explain but considered it my training. it takes some practice and finally completed one and now I never look up answers and either win or lose. )

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      5. I went right to sunday and toughed it out, lots of failures/learnign along the way, because that was my personal goal. I’ve always loved crosswords and jigsaws and like a challenge

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  10. Just a sign of the stages of life, I guess. My memory for ancient trivia is still fairly good, but there are times I get up from the armchair and wonder what I was intending to do.

    Interesting to see the comments about Wacky Races. They changed the character name here, as Muttley was the sidekick to Dick Dastardly. I suppose that was a much more British-sounding villain’s name. Muttley had the best cartoon laugh ever.

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      2. how could I forget Scooby Doo – probably my fave…

        Sounds like you had a lot of the same cartoons that we had. I’m sure such shows left a favorable impression of the U.S. 🙂

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  13. “…should I be proud of the fact that I can remember who was Porky Pig’s love, when sometimes I can’t remember who my two U.S. Senators are for the State of Pennsylvania, or who my U.S. Congressional representative is?”

    To be honest that sounds like a win to me! This post has reminded me though that I don’t even know the name of the opposition leader in UK politics, a positive sign I’m manage to avoid watching depressing news!

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