The Top Things We Learned This Week

By: Kent Granat

– We learned that this slogan won the family’s ‘best T-shirt of the year’ award:

                        National Sarcasm Society

                          Like we need your support

– We learned just how fast the world is changing.  When you go to an AT&T store to buy a ‘splitter’ for a telephone land line cord, and the affable twenty-something store clerk at first does not know what the product is, and then when explained says, “we don’t sell those here.”  (this is AT&T, you know American Telephone).

– We learned you would not like to come into contact very often with the gentleman who backed into a standing Uncle Kirk, at a crowded garage sale, and said, in all earnestness, “didn’t you see my back up lights?”

– We learned you have to appreciate the cleverness of the lady, driving with a ‘Magic Valley Bail Bonds’ advertisement on the car, who had a personalized Idaho license plate that read, ‘BOND GIRL’.

- We learned, when watching Ken Burn’s Lewis and Clark documentary once again, to appreciate the remarkable feat all the more.  William Clark estimated every day, by dead reckoning, the number of miles the Corp of Discovery traveled.  Upon arriving at the Pacific Ocean he estimated the group had traveled 4162 miles.  He was off by 40 miles.

- We learned there are cracks in all truisms.  This was the 44^th anniversary of the moon landing.  Kent remembers being at his girlfriend’s home, Marilyn (the current Mrs. Granat), watching it on the family’s black and white TV.  Marilyn remembers being at home watching the event, without a boyfriend.  Aren’t girls supposed to be better than guys about these kind of memories?

We learned that the State of Utah Highway Department has a sense of humor.  Just outside Monticello on a two-way paved road, there is a large yellow cautionary sign that reads:

- We learned that reminders of the generally awful regional weather (eastern Idaho / western Wyoming), are never very far away.  A tour guide at the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone (built in 1903-04) explains, there is no insulation in the Lodge because the Lodge was only to be open each year from June 15 to September 15.

- Finally, we learned to appreciate insightfulness wherever you find it.  A comedian recently said, “if I was one of the Pilgrims, and the other Pilgrims were like me, then the Plymouth, Massachusetts area would be known as, this is the place where all of those Pilgrims died”.