Passing the Torch

I don't know where the benchmark is, but sometime in all of our lives we face the dubious prospect of passing the torch on to someone else. If one is an athlete, this happens at a relatively young age, as the fresher legs and stronger drive make it obvious that someone will inevitably take one's place in the larger scheme. Some people experience the milestone on the job, as they become sometimes painfully aware that the new and improved version of themselves is poised to take over a pedestal. However, I think the weirdest passing of the torch occurs between fathers and sons, and maybe mothers and daughters.

The is not destined to be a bittersweet account in any way. In fact, I think it's kind of a pleasant moment because of the category of torch passing involved. Yesterday, my oldest son texted me to ask the name of the goddess of memory in Greek mythology. You see, for all of their lives I was the repositor of all kinds of useless, trivial information. Not that the name of mythological figures is always necessarily useless, but the information the boy wanted was for no significant purpose in this case. I spelled out what I could recall, Mnemone or something similar. I added the comment that I really had no idea, but I thought I was dancing in the right direction. Dutifully, I hit the send button.

WIthin seconds I received the response. I was wrong, and what was more, my other son had texted the right answer MINUTES before me. Now I know we each received the same query at about the same cyber time, and the boy bested me by MINUTES. How the hell long was I thinking about it. In my mind, I answered as quickly as possible.

I long ago bestowed the mantle of music trivia to my older son. When he was younger, I would quiz him on title and artist for any song that came on the radio. Through most of his life, I was pretty good. If the object in question was a song that received redio play, I probably knew the title and artist. When I didn't, it was rarely because I didn't remember; it was usually because I really wasn't familiar with the tune. Unfortunately, my range of silly knowledge was limited to rock and roll from the late fifties to middle eighties. Having been born in 1986, and having been trained almost from birth, my son expanded the range up to and including the present. While it's true that he is not quite so strong at the earliest limits of that range, he far surpasses me because he knows music from a much wider range of genres, and his identification abilities cover about ten more years than he has been alive.

This 'skill' served him well when he did a brief stint as as DJ at a neighborhood bar. He had managed to amass one heck of a library of music because he new which songs to look for. I remember about three years ago, I think, when he scolded me for not including much of Bob Dylan in his mental archives. It was an oversight I still feel apologetic about.

But back to the mythology example. My younger son never had a course in mythology; he encountered the subject on his own, and with some push from his brother, who was interested for awhile, and whom I directed to read some cool texts designed for whatever age group he was in at the time. I immediately texted the younger son to announce his acension to the throne of arcane factoids, and he was not even remotely impressed. My text said explicitly that the torch was passed, and the older son responded with a text that didn't even acknowledge my concession. He has known for quite awhile that he has caught and passed me in areas well beyond the recognition of musical compositions. The other son was even less impressed, as he didn't think the ceremony warranted any acknowledgment at all.

I asked them both to include me in this game of odd queries at least for a few more years. However, I don't know that they intend to do anything of the kind. Having demonstrated my incapacity, they will probably not think to send the quesiton my way, since the immediacy of the answer is the point, and they will be able to get what they want elsewhere. Whe needs a piece of information that takes the old man an hour or two to remember. By that time, they will have visited any number of cyber sources.

Again, I feel a mild pleasure that they play the game, that they like to house the information and have it at the ready. I am smiling. Oh, and for those of you cursed with the same trivia disease, the name of the goddess is Mnemosyne.