My question was simple enough.
“Shaquille O’Neal is in the NBA Hall of Fame, but making free throws obviously wasn’t his thing. So how many free throws would you ‘guess’ he missed during his career?” I asked my social media followers
I routinely ask such meaningless trivia questions to my online readers, strictly for fun. I hope it breaks up the monotony from my more serious posts or newspaper column teases or pitches for my latest book.
It reminds me of the days when someone would obtain a book on, say, sports trivia or presidential history or ancient philosophy, and others would try to guess answers to their questions. It would test our knowledge of any certain subject while prompting a conversation afterward.
And then the Internet came into our lives. And then Google and other search engines. With a click of a mouse or a smart phone, all of us turned into instant experts about anything and everything.
How many electoral votes did Ronald Reagan get in his presidential election against Jimmy Carter? Click, click, 489! What’s the population of Whiting in 2010? Click, click, 4,997! What is pianist Liberace’s full name? Click, click, Wladziu Valentino Liberace!
Within seconds, all of us became geniuses!
No, we didn’t. We merely became smart enough to look up answers that we didn’t previously know. And we did it with such ease that it seemed we were getting more intelligent with each click. We weren’t.
Yes, we gained access to all those easy-to-find answers, but we lost some of our natural ability to figure out those answers. Even if they were wrong, at least we used our critical thinking skills to try to determine those correct answers.
It was called “thinking.” Remember doing that?
Not anymore. Not often enough. In some situations these days, not at all.
We have become masters of information regurgitation. It comes in and it goes out.
Who wants to be wrong these days? No one.
Who wants to always be right these days? Everyone. Or so it seems.
Proof in point, when I asked my social media readers to “guess” how many free throws O’Neal missed in his NBA career, several of them didn’t guess at all. They Googled the answer, out of habit or pride or efficiency.
This isn’t the first time this has happened with my oddball questions to online readers. This is why I purposely wrote “guess” rather than “Google.” That’s the fun of it all. Taking a wild guess. Seeing how close you may be. Or may not be.
It’s not always about being correct. It’s about correctly using our critical thinking skills or our funny bone to answer such meaningless questions.
Yes, some readers actually guessed an answer to my question. One reader guessed 500, another guessed 2,000. I would have guessed somewhere in between those two numbers. I’m an NBA fan but I have no idea. Who would? That’s the fun part.
One reader, Tom Maloney, conducted quick “napkin math,” as he called it.
He wrote, “15 years, 82 games (roughly), and at least 5 free throw attempts per game… puts it at 6,150 free throw attempts. And he was terrible, so I’m assuming he made less than 50 percent. So, 3,500-plus misses.”
He was wrong. Way wrong. But his method was right. Very right.
I deemed him the “winner” of my trivia question because of his methodology, not his answer.
We need to remember that it’s OK to be wrong every now and then. It’s OK to appear wrong about something in public, even while swimming in the online fishbowl called social media.
It’s no fun always being right if you’re always finding it the wrong way, I say.
For the record, before you feel compelled to look it up, Shaq missed 5,317 free throws.
Remember conversations, too?
I don’t want to sound like the late Andy Rooney from “60 Minutes” fame, nor do want to get off on a rant here like former “Weekend Update” anchor Dennis Miller, but what the (expletive) happened to having a true conversation these days?
Instead, I’m hearing too many one-sided diatribes or monologues under the guise of a “conversation” between two or more people. I find myself either struggling to get a word in edgewise or resorting to repeatedly nodding my head in feigned agreement.
I come off looking like Harpo Marx or a bobble-head doll.
Last week I found myself in a so-called conversation with Pete Thayer, a 75-year-old East Chicago resident who admitted he was looking for “someone new to bore.” He knew our “conversation” was one-sided. He didn’t care. He joked about it.
“I could talk all day,” he quipped.
He almost did.
I asked if he minded that I may write about him and our little chit-chat. He was flattered.
“I know all kinds of interesting things,” Thayer said with a laugh.
I excused myself to chat with someone else who was interested in listening as well as talking. Thayer didn’t mind. He found someone else to bore.
“So like I was telling Jerry, my favorite U.S. president was…,” I heard him say as I walked away.
Typically, I can tell within the first five minutes with someone if we can hold a true conversation – they talk, I listen, I talk, they listen – or if I turn into a bobble head. Then I wonder if it’s just me, possibly because of my job description. I get paid to listen, and then to write about what I heard, watched or felt.
Feel free to let me know if this has also happened to you. I’ll note your responses in a future column.
Sex abuse survivors’ feedback
My recent column on the “No More Secrets” campaign to raise awareness about child sex abuse attracted a lot of reader feedback, mostly from survivors.
“I wanted to express sincere gratitude for Sunday’s article,” wrote Martha E. “Being a survivor it is a pure joy to know there will be no more secrets for past, present or future victims with the help of Senate Bill 355. Awareness is the key to unlock one’s mind for a better world.”
Twitter@jdavich
