Matthew Osborne
I was Google before Google was Google. Well, not in quite the all-encompassing detail, but on sports and pop culture stuff, I was the guy.
Before cell phones, my father used to call me on the landline (for you kids, we used to have to plug our phones into the wall and such) while he was out at a bar. POV, I am like 11 or 12 and home on a Saturday night, either watching my little sister or being babysat by some teenager.
So Pops is having an argument with someone at the bar about who won the Heisman Trophy in whatever year, or who the Buccaneers drafted in such and such a round, and the only way to settle those arguments back in the day was to call me.
In fairness, my father refuses to carry a smartphone even now, so it’s not like he can look these things up for himself in 2023. He has a phone that can call people and text, if you do it morse-code style by hitting the number 1 three times for a C and so forth. I don’t honestly know how he stands it.
So it happened the other night, he called me again, wondering when the Eagles play this week.
“I am trying to prove that calling you is faster than looking it up on a phone,” Pops said. And of course, I knew the answer to this easy question, vindicating myself as Sports Siri for an audience of one yet again.
I am glad that pitch was right over the plate, because I don’t remember things like I used to.
Fast forward to later the same evening while watching “Grease” on television for the 257th time. I sat on the couch feeling tired, and I could not even summon the name of the man appearing to sing to Frenchy in the malt shoppe.
“What’s the guy’s name? I asked my wife. “The sand guy from the beach movies?”
It was like I had been lobotomized. “Frankie Avalon,” she replied.
I nodded as if the name was on the tip of my tongue, but I was thinking David Hasselhoff, knowing that was not it. I was mixing up a reference from “Happy Gilmore.” What was going on in my brain?
I watched a little more, then asked, “Who was the woman from those movies?”
This time, my wife was stumped, too.
“Marie something? Mary Ann?” she said, trying to trigger the right name.
And there we were, neither of us able to come up with the name of a pretty famous Mouseketeer.
I think she finally went to the actual Google to pull the name of Annette Funicello, who I should have been able to come up with.
Earlier the same day, I was able to tell my cousin exactly which Detroit Lions game he attended 30 years ago with specific detail, even though I myself was not there, and now I could not think of the beach duo that captivated America?
Then my wife reminded me of the awful “Back to the Beach” reboot that was made 35 years ago to bring the pair back into the spotlight, with Pee Wee Herman thrown in.
“That’s the one where he dances to ‘Tequila,’” I said, even throwing a little of the dance movements.
“No,” she informed me. “It was Surfin’ Bird.”
Man, I am slipping. If I can’t remember Pee Wee’s dance numbers, why would anyone have a need to even talk to me at all?
My mother was once at a trivia contest, and the host asked “Who knows (insert sports question here)?”
She answered in a Cliff Clavin matter-of-fact way, “My son, Matthew.” The host informed her that her son did not perform the sports feat in question, but she pointed out that the question was “Who knows” who did it, and she was sure I did.
So-called experts say we only use 10 percent of our brain, and the movie “Lucy” tells us that if we use 100 percent, we will turn into some transcendent ethereal creature. (See, I remembered that movie, anyway.)
I don’t know if there is a way to open up more space to store some of this information, because I feel like it is being squeezed out too soon. What good is engaging in human conversation if you aren’t sitting there hoping they will ask you who won the Heisman Trophy in 1957, or what Jughead’s real name is?
John David Crow.
Forsythe Pendleton Jones III.
Now if I can just remember which is which.
Matthew Osborne is the editor of The Northeast Georgian. He can be reached at 706-778-4215 or editor@TheNortheastGeorgian.com.