memes

Reminds me of a story of a friend of mine.. She did her undergrad and masters in classics and archaeology. As part of her studies she participated in a summer dig on the island of Cyprus. She spent the summer working on remote archaeological sites in the rural countryside.

Well one day she needed to go into town for something. She goes in to the only store in town, a tiny little grocery store. She finds what she's looking for then goes to check out. Suddenly, with horror, she realizes, "wait, I don't know how to talk to this guy. I can't speak modern Greek."

So she attempts the next best thing. She tries to talk to the shopkeeper...in ancient Greek. She tried to have a random conversation with someone in ancient Greek in modern Cyprus.

The shopkeeper looks at her like she has two heads, pauses for a moment, and says, in English, "lady, no one has talked like that here for two thousand years!"

There have been few things in my life more satisfying than being in a room full of generally smart, knowledgeable people, and being the only one who knows the answer to a trivia question. It's happened a few times in my life, and usually it's about mythology.

One time while scoring the round, the quizmaster was asking the questions aloud and letting the crowd shout back the correct answers. When it came to the Greek mythology question I was the only one who shouted, "Tartarus!" Someone in the back of the room shouted, "Nerd!" Later in the round he found me and apologized, but it didn't bother me.

For my first baby shower we hired our quizmaster to host trivia. In the interest of fairness, our six person team was split across three of the teams. It ended in a three-way tie, and the tiebreaker was the name of Odin's horse. It was Sleipnir, which means "Slippy". Slippy the eight-legged horse. That one was especially satisfying.

I think you could get more creative with your language, with that knowledge. If nothing else, reading the Bible (or catching the cliffs notes) and getting a firm understanding of 'The Classics' gives you an immense wealth of phrases and references to help illustrate your point that are so ingrained in Western culture and media that you're likely to strike more points with it than without.

I'm still making my way through that herculean effort, that sisyphusian task. I struggled like Odysseus returning home to get through the Bible the first time, but once you get through all the parables and their Lot, there are some really interesting stories that make for easy metaphors and similes.