Queen of Look Up

Ruminating on the NaBloPoMo theme for the month, I've had many ideas flitting through my mind. For those who don't know, NaBloPoMo is a challenge to write a blog post every day for a month. Nablopomo.com, in an effort to help participants overcome writer's block, provides a monthly theme- the theme for May 2010 is "Look Up".

There are many reasons that the phrase "Look Up" appeals to me in my life right now. Many situations are causing me to gaze heavenward for guidance, some other situations are beginning to look up. Many deep paths can be taken down this particular blogging road.

But tonight, I'm going shallow. It occurred to me that another definition for "look up" is what I do continually- I look things up. For one thing, I work for a text question service, where I spend entire shifts looking up the answers to people's questions about their homework, relationships, sex life, addictions, and medical conditions. But really, I just like to look things up.

Remember when we had to sit through movie credits to see who played a certain character or wrote a certain song? No more! I leave the theater and make a bee line for imdb, to look it up. While I'm there, I learn things I didn't even know I WANTED to know. Did you know Brad Pitt currently has 21 projects in production? How does he find the time, with all those kids?

It makes me pretty good at trivia, but only temporarily. Tonight, my sister was speculating on a comedian's age, and I was at the ready with the year, because I looked it up last night. I won't remember that piece of not very useful trivia in a few days, but for now, I'm an expert on that particular guy.

Middle Child recently ran up a $23 cell phone bill texting the very service for which I work. Are you KIDDING me? Text Mom! It's FREE! Naturally, I made her pay me back, and I also threatened her life.

Do you remember when we had to use books to look things up? My family once watched a movie about a historical figure, and afterwards, my father came home from the library with books for every age level... we all researched and shared facts for days! Now everything from dictionaries to medical journals is accessible online. We don't even use phone books in our house!

Not that the phone company doesn't try, by the way. We get new phone books at a pretty alarming rate, particularly in light of the fact that my husband won't allow me to throw them away, instead choosing to "recycle" them, which is his code word for "put them in the carport until my wife's head explodes". True story- he recently got rid of about 30 phone books he'd recycled in that charming manner, and the next day, there was a brand new set sitting in the exact same place, courtesy of the phone company.

Because the phone company hates me.