Random facts

Is it just me, or do other people suddenly and surprisingly remember random facts from school with absolutely no prompting from their outside environment?

The other day, I was chatting to a friend about summer being pretty much over when he got all wound up, becoming suddenly evangelical about how autumn starts in September.

I’m fairly conflict-avoidant when it comes to arguments in public places, but I felt so certain of this fact that I decided it would be the hill I died on. I stood up straight, hands by my side, pure Feis Maitiu, like. And I recited: Brigid used a cross of reed

To spread the word to those in need Remember every start of spring

The joy St Brigid’s story brings.

His response was a slack jaw and excessive blinking. I sniffed in smug satisfaction and explained further that if St Brigid’s Day is the first day of spring, then summer must begin in May. I drove my point home by pointing out an unforgettable mnemonic from school — autumn starts in August because both begin with ‘au’.

He whipped out his phone and started showing me article after article about how summer is defined as the three warmest months of the year and how Met Eireann bases that definition on climatological data over a 30-year period.

We found ourselves shrieking incontinently at each other across a fundamental divide formed in primary school. The distance between the gap in our education is too far to even hear what the other is saying.

Our agreement to disagree was made easier by admitting that seasons mean nothing in this country anyway. We have cold, wet, cold and wet, warm and wet or too warm — there’s something for everyone to give out about.

As we skulked away from the location of our argument, we got chatting about how some of the things learned at school never really leave you and become the foundational beliefs for a lot of your adulthood.

For the next hour, we spat lyrical facts at each other. You know those things you learned off by heart that you always say with the same tone and inflection. It’s one thing I love about my schooling — I have all these facts that live like poems in my head.

Here are some of the ones we remembered together.

I started with one I learned from an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Mitosis is the process of cell division.

Belly laughter

He came back with: ‘The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell’, and we burst into spontaneous belly laughter. There’s nothing funny about mitosis or mitochondria, but as the hot sun set behind us on the canal, and seagulls went berserk overhead, and people in face masks passed us by, we laughed at how facts are so comforting in chaos. The world might be gone mad but at least we can both be sure that fat can be identified in the laboratory by the use of Sudan III lysochrome diazo dye.

I was reminded that I had to start every single Junior Cert Irish essay with: ‘Maith dom nach bhfuair tu an litir uaim nios luaithe ach chun na firinne a ra taim marbh leis an Teastas Soisearach’.

We walked by the water’s edge and joked about whether there’s an oxbow lake on the Royal Canal. There isn’t. We sang: In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He had forgotten that albumin is the protein found in an egg. I was reminded that in music, an antiphonal piece is when there is a call and response between the vocalists or instruments. He told me that Claudius killed Hamlet’s father but I went the extra mile and informed him that Hamlet was a ‘procrastinating, prevaricating and ruminating eponymous hero’.

I don’t know how to file a tax return by myself. I don’t know how to bleed a radiator or service a boiler. I don’t know how to calculate a mortgage or where to get a pension. Whoever sets the syllabus doesn’t think those things are worthy of teaching but you better remember Lough Neagh is the largest lake on the island of Ireland.

I called the The Boy Mate, still laughing, to tell him about my evening. He rattled off two memorable facts from school.

Although they look super pretty in an urban kitchen, unlined copper pots will destroy the vitamin C, folic acid and vitamin E in your vegetables.

Every single film on the English syllabus can be said to use the motif of light to illuminate and connect the themes of the characters’ indoor (private) and outdoor (public) life.

No marks for guessing who did a great Leaving Cert, then.

Met Eireann might fight me on this — but that summer evening, for me, was the warmest in years.