Chronicles from Cotolo{November 2008}

Frank Cotolo
The little I know is enough for me

I know so little about any one thing that sometimes I feel I know all there is to know. Sure, it’s wonderful to be specialized and know all there is to know about one subject, but you would be surprised how useless that can be at social gatherings, where a menu of professions and interests weave their way through crowded rooms.

I enjoy going to these events because of the variety of people attending. And my knowing a little about any one thing surely helps me talk with more people than those who know a lot about one thing.

My neighbor, Dr. Stoven, for instance, knows everything there is to know about facial muscles. He makes a damned good living because of all he knows about facial muscles. He is the only person ever to explain to me how I smile. Not that I ever actually cared to know the anatomical reason but at least it added one thing for me to know about facial muscles that I did not know and that, I was sure, would help me more than it would help Dr. Stoven in the long run.

This could be the reason why some people say I am the life of the party and why I am invited to at least twenty parties every weekend. Some are far away from my home but still, the invites from Rio, Vancouver, Paris, Hong Kong and Chicago, pour in by telephone, email and cell-phone texts. It is getting so that I may soon have to purchase a tie.

People find me fascinating and I find that fascinating because most of the people who find me fascinating are fascinated by what I know. That’s fascinating, all right, considering how little I know. What does that say about those who know a lot? It says a lot about those who know a lot. Exactly how much it says about them is unknown to me because I only know much about that particular subject.

Much of this goes to show you –or anyone—that what they told me in school was hooey. One of my teachers, for instance, a Science teacher named McConner or Conners or Conmack or MacConnie or something, told me: “Cotolo, you had better come up with one subject you wish to study or else you are not going to make it out there in the real world.” I told him that was fine because I could make out there in the fake world, which is what I have done and continue to do. And rather successfully, too.

So, as I go through life even now in my late 50s, I try not to accumulate any knowledge about any one thing so I can continue to enter in conversations with people who know so much about so little. It’s the most I can do for society, aside from bringing a stray cat a cup of milk or something.