Judging by what’s out there on social media, I’m not alone in this. I think humans are hard-wired to zero in on the pointless, at the cost of the essential. We literally start trying to communicate the instant we are born by crying loudly in an effort to tell the world, “I’m hungry! I’m cold! I’m confused! And “Put me back!”

These may be some of the most relevant and honest things we will ever say in our lives. By the time we get to the point where we can be understood by others, our brains have given up on practicality. For example, what most toddlers can NOT say is, “Grandma or Grandpa” despite thousands of repetitions, but they CAN say with great fluency any number of four-letter words as a result of an unfortunate one-time exposure to Uncle Bob who will not be invited back any time soon. 

As far as I can see, the compulsion to embrace the most useless words never leaves us. I once had a job helping adults with severe disabilities. Each day they would spend time at different stations either learning skills or making things to sell at their homes.

One day I was supervising the coloring table. The pages they were working on were super basic, A is for Apple, B is for Ball etc. All good until we came to X. X was not for X-ray, or Xylophone or even eXit. To my delight, X was for Xiphias Gladius. I know (because I went home and looked it up) that a Xiphias Gladius is a type of swordfish.

This became the grand hurrah of the coloring pages forever afterwards. I couldn’t let it go, probably because I was bored out of my mind with “Z is for Zebra.” which, now that I think about it, is also super useless information under the circumstances. The people at that table may not have known how to write their name or how to count to three, or use a spoon, but I made darn sure they wouldn’t go through life without recognizing a Xiphias Gladius when they saw one!

My husband likes languages, so he’s especially prone to getting caught in the trivialities. He once taught the story of Noah and the Ark to a Sunday school class of 11-year-olds. There are many wonderful and inspiring lessons that can be drawn from that story. And I sure hope the kids learned those lessons at home, because what they got from Dave was the word, antidiluvian (meaning: from before the flood). With luck, that might be useful as much as once in their lives on a trivia night sometime. 

Then there was the time I taught English as a second language to adult Spanish speakers. I really tried to teach them useful conversational English, but the only thing I’m 100% sure I taught them was the phrase, “couch potato.”

I didn’t mean to teach them this. It just sort of slipped out one day and one of the younger guys thought it was the greatest expression ever and used it about 10 times in five minutes. This triggered the other guys to tease each other about being couch potatoes which made several of the women comment on their husband’s potato like qualities, and class went downhill from there.  

Oh well. It’s all good practice, right? And my students could take comfort in the fact that the few things I can say in Spanish, are a good deal less useful than being able to say couch potato in English.

Happily, humans continue to learn throughout their whole lives, so there’s still hope. To date, I haven’t wasted any brain cells on learning passwords or important birthdays, but now I can say, “There’s a cow in the house!” in French. Maybe someday I’ll learn how to say, “Pass the pastries.”

When it comes to French, I really can’t think of anything more important to say than that.

Anneli Byrd is an academic adviser in Weber State University’s General Studies and Exploratory advising.