I like all kinds of animals (did you know that elephants have the longest term of pregnancy of all mammals, at 2 years? That seems like a long time to be pregnant and carrying another life within your body, I think MJ would not appreciate that), and falcons definitely are high up there on the list. I once volunteered as the audience member at the L.A. Zoo to be the lucky guy to hold up 5 dollars for the falcon on display to come grab it from my hand and return to it to the falconer (the falcon trainer). I looked cool for the kids at my summer camp for awhile, so I appreciated both falcon and falconer in that endeavor (don't remember if it was a peregrine, kestrel, or merlin falcon, should have paid more attention).
But this post is about a very famous historical figure in trivia circles but also possibly explorer and adventure circles, Robert "Falcon" Scott, who set out to be the first to reach the South Pole in 1911 as part of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, but was beaten by Roald Amundsen who got there weeks before Scott did and planted the Norway flag there to prove it, as if to signal a huge "I win" to his rival Scott. Falcon was already low on provisions and energy by the time he reached the South Pole, but to make it worse his crew encountered a blizzard on the way back to his ship the Terra Nova, and he didn't make it, freezing to death with the rest of his crew. What a shame, and makes me wonder how devastating it must have been to be Mr. Scott: your life's ambition, the thing you've been working for your whole life, is foiled by your rival, but then the effort also cost you your life. If I'd known better, I would have just let Amundsen get the glory and stay the heck away, maybe try something else! I wonder if Scott either a) knew he would die pursuing the ultimate goal or 2.) knew Amudsen would get there first, would he have tried anyway, just to say he did it? Maybe.......he's now one of the most famous explorers ever, and one of the most popular Jeopardy trivia answers next to Queen Victoria, Henrietta Lacks, and Charlemagne.
Whenever I watch Jeopardy and great players piling up long streaks like current superchamp Chris Pannulo, I wonder worry that I will wind up being Robert Falcon Scott.......going through all the preparation and work and spending all that extra time learning about arcane and trivial (by definition) facts, only to have others the goal before I do. Reaching the South Pole would be something unattainable, like breaking Ken Jennings's 74- game winning streak, the gold standard in trivia, which is impossible for a guy like me who never did Scholastic Bowl, never read through the encyclopedia as a kid, and never got into trivia until 2 years ago, but like a 10 or 20-game winning streak has been done and requires just a bit (actually a lot) of luck. But when people Chris Pannulo have great games (buzzing in on 51 out of 60 clues, for example) my blood kind of boils; he's Amundsen to my Robert Falcon Scott; he got there first and there's nothing I can do but watch.
You know what's worse than being Robert Falcon Scott, though? The crew members who followed Falcon through thick and thin, unflinchingly on the worst place on earth, or at least the coldest: Antactica, only to die with him and not even get his glory in the historybooks. That really sucks.
No comments:
Post a Comment