It's amazing how quickly knowledge leaves your brain.
For the mandatory art history class at Columbia, we had to learn all the ins and outs of Gothic cathedrals, especially the front door section. I can remember some terms like quatrefoil, trumeau, but I forgot exactly what these dudes would be called. Not the dudes themselves, but their title in the greater architectual sense of the word.
It's sad to think that all that knowledge that gets crammed into your brain in college only temporarily resides there until the next semester's load comes in and you have to dump the old. Now I know this isn't entirely true, but I used to look at notebooks of mine even from previous semesters, and I'd have no recollection of even writing those words down. It's like someone else can write in my handwriting. Did I really know all that stuff? Did I really know enough of that stuff to get an A in whatever class that was?
You remember some small things, you know, things that can impress people during a game of Trivial Pursuit, as if people even still play that game anymore.
Do people even play games, period? It doesn't even seem that long ago that there used to be television advertisements for board games. Life, Headache (though I much preferred Trouble), Stratego, Battleship...But now we all get together on XBOX live, right? We all put on our headsets and curse at each other and use racial slurs because we can all be big men hiding behind our consoles in the privacy of our own home as we stun grenade and eviscerate each other, right boys? That's the same thing as sitting in front of the fire with Monopoly, right?
Maybe King Crimson said it best:
Nothing he's got he really needs,
Twenty-first century schizoid man.
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