This just in from National Public Radio:
"Today, William Tunstall-Pedoe told All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel that after a computer analysis of more than 300 million facts (done by a search engine called True Knowledge that he's invented), it seemed clear that ... well ... nothing great happened on 4-11-54."
But Tunstall-Pedoe insisted that while on most days, "lots of famous people are born, famous people die, there are events happening ... this particular day was extremely notable for having almost nothing happen"
Ok, I admit that when I see a name like William Tunstall-Pedoe in a news story, my P.G. Wodehouse detector inches into the red zone, and I figure that its an "Onion" story. Especially when the story is about the most boring day of the twentieth century.
I know that for many readers, April 11, 1954 was doubly boring, because you were not born yet. Ordinary ennui is at least a state of being, which is inherently more interesting than non-being. You don't have to agree.
But I remember April 11, 1954 well, and while it was boring, there were some moments of interest. I was five years old, already well-acquainted with boredom. (We didn't get a TV until much later.)
I spent the early morning goofing around in the bedroom getting dressed.
How come when you put a shirt on backwards, you can fix it without taking the shirt completely off, but you have to take the shirt completely off if you put it on inside out?
I made the very important discovery on April 11, 1954 that if you put the shirt on both inside out and backwards, it doesn't really do any good to fix the backward problem first, because the chances are that you when you take the shirt off to fix the inside-out problem, you have a 50-50 chance of putting back on backwards anyway.
Might as well wait, do the inside-out problem first and then fix the backwards problem.
I remember looking back on the many times that I had tried to put on a shirt like pants, and sighing at my lost youth. Those were good days, but I had moved on.
I went to read the paper with my dad. I only knew how to read one word, ("the") and I would help him find it in every news story of the paper.
It might have the 12th, but I think it was the 11th, that I spent most of the day looking for my shoes, the most boring game of hide-and-go-seek ever played. My shoes hid, I seeked them and my mother helped with clues. "Where did you take them off?" and "They're right where you left them."
As I remember it, they were those "Mary Jane" shoes - kind of like perforated wingtips in the front, round toes, but with a strap. A strap? Really? What were my parents thinking? I should have never found them. Just left them under the couch.
The rest of the day? Just the usual excitement. Dust motes in the air in the afternoon, especially after whacking one of the burgundy couch pillows. Petting the dog. Watching my mother take care of my little sister who was just nine months old and starting to walk around.
I remember that night on April 11, 1954, a day which did seem boring to me thinking that perhaps I missed something.
As my parents tucked me in, I asked my Dad to read me a story. He read my favorite by William Ellery Channing: Spiritual Freedom.
And when he got to the best part, I said it along with him: "I call that mind free that which discovers everywhere the radiant signatures of the infinite spirit and in them finds help to its own spiritual enlargement."
"It was a good day, Dad."
"Yes, it was, Son."
"Good night Moon."
"I think I hear your Mother calling me."
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