By Tyler Samien
As posted on WhenFallsTheColiseum
As posted on WhenFallsTheColiseum
Recently, I saw a post on Facebook from
someone who had learned of Osama Bin Laden’s assassination an entire
year after it happened. As a well informed American, he was shocked that
he had initially missed the story. I’ve never missed news as big as
Bin Laden’s death (as far as I know), but I can relate. I was just as
shocked when I learned recently from a New Yorker article on the upcoming Cloud Atlas Movie that the Wachowski Brothers are now the Wachowski Siblings and Larry is now Lana.
What concerned me on learning about the
“siblings” was not the news (who really cares?), it was the thought that
I may be out of touch. Supposedly, the
big news on Lana was in 2008, I was way behind. I was forced to justify
my ignorance by either (1) convincing myself that I should be proud of
my chosen news sources for withholding such frivolity or (2) convincing
myself that the daily proliferation of ever-changing information means
everyone (you included) will eventually miss something important. I
chose the latter.
Hopefully you don’t choose the day Osama Bin Laden is killed to go overnight camping in a wilderness without cell service
and spend the week after in a self-loathing pit of media avoidance and
drunkenness due to a breakup, but it could happen. As a child, you could
miss the bus the morning you were supposed to learn what a BJ is and
decades later, be mocked for your ignorance at work.
How does it feel to know that there are
probably obvious things you don’t know that everyone else does? That
these things may be waiting to surprise you when you least expect it?
Depending on your personality, the thought can be scary or fun. It
reminds of something that happened to my sister recently. [Read More]
