TV Guide for 20 plus years? I must be old

          When I was twelve years old, my only living grandpa bought me a subscription to TV Guide and continued renewing it each year until he died. And then my dad took over with payments until he died. And I let the subscription run out.

          My mom asked why I hadn’t renewed it.  TV is just not all that important to me.  It may have been when I was twelve.  But each year I become less interested in the TV and programming.

 I did enjoy reading TV Guide stories on occasion – but there were oft times that even the articles or the lay out lost my interest.

          After I married Roland – there were two of us who really didn’t care if we owned a television and two that would “die without it”  and actually there have been months at a time that we have had to do without (especially after even local programming was changed to high definition)

          So after a while, I started receiving junk mail from AARP and funeral and retirement homes.  I was on all the lists for senior citizens.  It was crazy!  I figured it must have been all those years of having my name on the TV Guide.

I do appreciate the educational shows that Jenna enjoys.  And I have enjoyed the trivia and historical programs that Roland will watch sometimes.  I do watch shows right now. But as a whole, I really wouldn’t miss it if it were gone. 

If I do ever become interested in watching shows in prime time, they seem to get cancelled (“the Defenders” for example) and so most of the shows I watch are in syndication and it really wouldn’t hurt me if I never saw them again.

I am almost 50.  But I still don’t qualify for medicare or retirement.  I don’t get near as much junk with Roland as I did when I was living with mom.  Most of the time there is a “senior” offer, it has Roland’s name on it.  He’s not really a senior citizen either.  But he is closer than I am.

What's so Odd about That?

I googled Odd Facts and came up with list after list of odd facts – but not all were “facts”.  I questioned some of it like “Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street were named after the cab driver and police officer in “It’s a Wonderful Life” – I could not find any evidence that confirmed that.  Henson said he was not there when they named the characters, but even he believes that it’s just coincidence.

Then I decided I needed something to back up all the facts that I share.  Hey, but just because you read it on the Internet doesn’t make it true.  And just because you learn something in school doesn’t mean it will stick. 

For instance, my peers and I learned about the solar system almost every year that I was in elementary school.  (I personally saw no purpose for it.)  We were taught that Pluto was the smallest planet.  Today we are told that Pluto is not a planet at all.  It seems that the International Astronomical Union decided has debated the issue.  Whatever.  (Again.  What was the point of learning about it either way?)

So here are the facts that I found back up for (and more than one source at that)

Odd Facts

Charlie Brown's father was a barber (as well as Charles Schulz’s father)

Betsy Ross was born with a fully formed set of teeth called natal teeth

Bingo is the name of the dog on the CrackerJack box.

Butterflies taste with their feet

The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."

A group of kangaroos is called a mob.

A group of unicorns is called a blessing.

The first Santa icon (the one we all know and love today) made his first appearance with Coca-Cola in 1931.

John Wayne’s birth name is Marion Morrison.  His grave remained without a marker for almost twenty years.

Warren G. Harding was elected President on his birthday.

The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.

Walt Disney’s original name for his mouse was Mortimer and not Mickey

4 Odd facts about me:

I can drink 1-2 quarts of liquid (soda, juice, water) and keep it inside of me for a few hours.  But if I have just one teaspoon of milk, I have to go the second it hits my bladder.

Wind wipes me out – even if I’m inside and am not even aware that it’s windy. I am literally so out of it that I feel drugged.

I can touch my nose with my tongue.

I am allergic to most Christmas plants.  Amazingly the tree is not one of them.

An odd fact about my husband:

 He can drive in any element and not notice how bad it is.  He will drive towards the sun glaring through the window or with an inch of snow on his windshield and not even be fazed by it.  I think that’s incredible!