Tuesday, 11/19

Jim's Adventures in Celebrity, pt 2, or...I suppose that as far as reputations go, it’s not the worst one in the world to have,

No more than an hour after writing yesterday about how I'm apparently a “celebrity”, I walked into a convenience store and the first thing the young woman working behind the counter said to me was, and I quote, “You know everything, right”? Now as those of you who read this on a daily basis are well aware, no, I certainly DON’T know everything, yet I apparently know enough that people seem to think I do, which I guess is a bizarre side effect of my being a local “celebrity”. Anyway, the young lady proceeded to ask me a question that I actually knew the answer to, which, I guess, then further cemented my reputation, at least in her mind.

I’ve said this before and I know I’ll say it again—I, Jim Koski, do NOT know everything. Sure, when I was a teenager and my younger brother & sister were in grade school, they’d ask me something, I’d answer, they’d ask how I knew, and I’d reply with “I know everything”. And that even carried down to the next generation, when a decade or so ago when my niece Mallory brought in a friend to the station. She asked me a question about something, I answered, her friend asked how I knew, and Mallory just said “He knows everything”.

You think THAT’S how reputations get started?

Of course, that’s just in my family. How does the rest of the world get this warped idea that I know everything, especially when I don’t? Well, this is what I think (and, bear in mind, that I could be wrong, especially because I DON’T know everything)—I seem to have a weird talent. I seem to have this bizarre ability to talk about almost anything in the world for at least 30 seconds, and make it sound like I know what I’m talking about, before revealing to anyone around that I’m really just a massive fraud. But before those 30 seconds are up, some people seem convinced that I really am an expert on the subject.

Which, as both you and I know, is hardly ever the case.

It’s an ability that does come in handy on many occasions, be it on the old “Stump Jim Day” on movie trivia, or when asked a very bizarre and intricate question during one of my History Center walks. As long as you sound like you know what you’re talking about when you start out, I’ve found that people—people who know much more than you—will then provide enough new information on the subject to allow you to keep going, which then further leads people to believe that you know everything.

It’s a vicious circle, I tell ya.

Actually, I don’t think my ability is anything out of the ordinary. I think anyone who has a little natural curiosity and who does a little reading could develop it. I’ve always thought that knowing a little bit about a lot of subjects is better than knowing everything about only one subject; if nothing else, it makes you a much more well-rounded person.

And if you take it to an extreme, or happen to be a “celebrity” where you have a chance to show off the ability, you start to develop a reputation, a reputation that ends with you walking into a convenience store and hearing those fateful words—

“You know everything, right”?

(jim@wmqt.com), who actually knows so little about everything that it’s frightful.