THE NOT-SO-TRIVIAL PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE

I read recently that young people in the United States are woefully ignorant on the subject of geography. I recently discovered in an embarrassing game of Trivial Pursuit, that I, too, while not young, am nonetheless an educationally deficient citizen who doesn't quite know where anything in the world is.

Unhappy with that newfound status, I vowed to abandon my stack of who-dun-it paperbacks and replace them with textbooks of world studies. As I followed through, bored into restlessness and lacking recall, I remembered that I'd had no trouble retaining the answers I'd missed during the game. Where was it written that I had to be competing to use the question-and-answer cards?

I began testing myself with the geography questions located at the top of each card, marked with a bright blue oval and a black "G." The corresponding answer was on the back, also at the top and marked with the same blue oval and black letter. I didn't have far to go to confirm or contradict my answers.

While I admit that the first question I encountered, "What's the only U.S. state that ends with a K?" wasn't an earthshaking concern, it piqued my curiosity, and by the time "New York" occurred to me, I'd mentally scoured the United States and stimulated my brain into a study mode. "What's the southernmost state in the U.S.?" fooled me, of course; I answered "Texas," then felt compelled to check the atlas to confirm their answer: "Hawaii." This apprised me of the number of Hawaii's islands, their proximity to the Equator, and several other characteristics I'd never had reason to ponder.

The next question, "What European city has the world's busiest port?" stumped me. When I read "Rotterdam" on the back, I couldn't even remember what specific country beyond "one of those Scandinavian ones" contained Rotterdam. I was again led to my atlas, where I not only confirmed that it was the Netherlands, but noticed the location of that country relative to its surroundings and several of its other cities (which I hadn't known existed). And so it went. Learning was an adventure, each blue oval jetting me to a new spot on my globe, me gleaning facts and features at each landing.

While my original intention was to brush up on geography, before I knew it, my eyes were wandering downward on each card to the other categories, and I was picking up information on the other five topics. Within a few hours I'd learned everything from the truly trivial

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