...in which I've been living a lie for something like 24 years.
Well, now, this is an interesting story, although it's possible that no one else will think it's as neat as I do:
You know how some people are able to anticipate the zeitgeist, to predict what’s gonna become popular and important before other people can? Well, one such man is Fred L. Worth of Sacramento. He saw the whole trivia craze coming before it arrived, and probably contributed to it to some extent, publishing a series of “Super Trivia” books beginning with the Trivia Encyclopedia in 1974.
Now, Fred worked hard and did a lot of research on his books, and was justifiably concerned that someone would steal his work. You can’t copyright a bunch of facts, though (he had no claim on the speed of light or the number of electrons in an oxygen atom), and for a while he was unsure how to protect himself. But he’d heard about how mapmakers, who face essentially the same problem, put tiny, insignificant falsehoods in their maps. A fake street name, a tiny imaginary stream in an unpopulated area, whatever. Then, if those imaginary places turn up in someone else’s map, you can prove that they copied you and sue them. So Fred included a falsehood in his books. In the midst of all these carefully researched facts, there was one tiny little lie, something Fred just made up off the top of his head.
Now, me, I’m a huge fan of the old TV series Columbo, with Peter Falk. Those of you who watch the series know that everyone calls him “Columbo” or “Lieutenant” without ever addressing him by his first name. His Christian name was, in fact, quite a mystery to me when I was growing up (fostered by Gramma, who was a little obsessed with finding out, too). I used to watch the show so carefully, hoping to catch a glimpse of his identification, or that some friend (he never seemed to have many of those) would drop it casually into a conversation. And I never had any luck. But then I played Trivial Pursuit for the first time, in prob’ly about 1984, and there it was on one of the cards:
Question-What is Lieutenant Columbo’s first name?
Answer-Philip.
Oh, I was so excited. I felt like I’d been handed the key to decoding the Rosetta Stone. Even all these years later, I remember how pleased I was with this information.
And you, my intelligent & insightful reader, have already heard the first shoe drop and are waiting for the second. Here it is: Columbo, of course, never had a first name on the series. “Philip” is that one tricky piece of misinformation that ol’ Fred made up to catch copycats. He sued the makers of Trivial Pursuit, too, and made them admit that they had lifted about a third of their game directly out of his books.
But the funny thing is this: Trivial Pursuit is so widespread and influential, and this tidbit of information so irresistible for fans of the (very successful) series, that the name “Philip Columbo” has entered into our culture. It appears in books, advertisements, and websites all over the English-speaking world. It’s good to have an answer, even if the answer is just made-up. I wonder...do you suppose that this is how religions get started?
So, a bit of information cherished for a lifetime turns out to be false. Well, that happens to all of us every day, I expect. People are constantly discovering that they’ve been systematically lied to their entire lives by parents, teachers, and priests (especially priests). In comparison with those lies, this little bit of disillusionment is very minor. And hey, in this case the spurious bit of “knowledge” is being replaced with kind of a neat story, which is better than disillusionment usually turns out. The way I see it, I came out waaay ahead.
***Many thanks to The Ultimate Lieutenant Columbo Site for the details of this story. Also on the site they have a closeup picture of Columbo’s ID from one episode. It looks as though the first name might possibly be “Frank,” but it’s such a bad picture that it’s really hard to say. In case anyone but me is still wondering.