Conversation Starters

 

    My maternal Grandpa was a carpenter, a quiet guy who was addicted to dog racing. When he was in his mid-70”s, he left my Grandma in Loveland, Colorado and spent a winter in Florida working on a farm where they raised Greyhounds. There he learned that they train the dogs in large, fenced areas with live rabbits and that a rabbit will slow down just a tiny bit before it darts one direction or the other. 

     In a race situation the dogs chase a mechanical bunny mounted to the rail around an oval track. Grandpa discovered that dog races could be fixed if the person operating the mechanical rabbit would slow it just enough so the lead dog would break stride thinking the rabbit was going to change directions and then the next dog would be in the lead. A good operator could shuffle the pack so that any dog chosen could win. This pretty much soured him on dog racing.

     I only saw him during family holidays, but I most remember him from his method of filling conversational voids at the table. When most of the niceties about weather and cousin Trixie’s divorce were exhausted, my Grandpa would lean back in his chair and ask “Why do they call shoes shoes?,” at which point some semi-educated member of the family would say that the word “shoe” comes from the German word “shuh.” His rejoinder was “Why do the Germans call shuhs shuhs?” 

     I bring him into our midst because it is January and we are entering the cabin fever and election seasons. There will be gatherings, even during these snow-ridden times, of family and friends when the dinner conversation stalls or heads off into contentious issues and the reader may need a diversionary tactic to keep family meltdown at bay. You are welcome to try Grandpa’s shoe question but as backup topics I have gathered the following list of little know assumptions that might divert real arguments. Stay safe out there.

 

There are 333 squares on a toilet paper roll.

Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have a belly button.

The toothbrush was invented in 1498.

If coloring were not added to Coca Cola, it would be green.

Two thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in New Jersey.

The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache in a standard deck of cards.

One pound of fat represents 4000 calories.

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated. 

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.

The Eiffel Tower has 2,500,000 rivets in it.

The average age of a major league baseball is five to seven pitches.

In 2006, eighteen Americans fractured their skulls while vomiting in a toilet.

The longest recorded flight of a domestic chicken is thirteen seconds.

A metal coat hanger is 44 inches long when straightened.

French toast isn’t French. It was invented by Joseph French in New York.

A whale’s penis is called a dork.

The average human creates 25,000 quarts of saliva in a lifetime.

Every minute six people turn seventeen years old in the United States.

The average house fly lives a month. 

A bowling pin needs to tilt seven and a half degrees to fall. 

Americans eat eighteen acres of pizza per day.

Dolphins sleep with one eye open.

The inventor of the Pringles can is buried in one.

Canada eats more macaroni and cheese than any other country.

Selfies cause more deaths than shark attacks.

Porcupines float. 

The Philippines consist of over seven thousand islands.

It takes a drop of water ninety days to travel the entire Mississippi River.

A dime has 118 ridges around its edge.

Marrying a cousin is legal in 26 states.

Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.

Non-dairy creamer is flammable. 

Hostess can make 55,000 Twinkies per hour.