The "T" Encyclopedia

We have on a shelf in our living room ("the room with the piano?" my children like to clarify even after all these many years...we "live" in the room with the TV, according to their logic and had family night in the piano room so that should be the family room.)...Anyway, upon that shelf, there is a row of green and white World Book Encyclopedias (minus the "G" which got left at a Scouting activity in Plano and never recovered), bought in 1988 to provide our children with a important source of education. We had always wanted one and that year in Hong Kong was the first year we had the money to buy the set of very expensive books.

I came from a family who had a set of encyclopedias and thought every family should own a set. While I can't claim to have ever read one from cover to cover (family lore reports that my brother Todd had done a bit of that), I have spend hours reading things along the way to finding the real item I was looking up................

Which brings me to the point of this post (finally!! you were thinking.) My children have missed the joy of encyclopedias. Except for the time when they were much younger and I would encourage them to look things up in the encyclopedia, they are "internet" searchers. That is awesome. The ability to access information is truly amazing and I use it all of the time. However, yesterday, I simply wanted to know how big a ping pong table was as I was sitting down to lunch. So I grabbed the "T" encyclopedia and started the search for "table tennis" (that is where I was sent after first looking in the "P" volume for "ping pong")...

Did you know that "tape worms" can be less than 1" long or longer than 30'? The "tailorbird" uses his long beck as a needle to sew the edges of his nest together. "William Howard Taft" was the president who started the tradition of throwing out the first ball to open the major league baseball season. And that the "T" encyclopedia can be the source of "table setting" information, at least from 1988. And the size of a ping pong table is 5' by 9' by 2 1/2 feet tall.

Look what is missed when you simply type in a word and 1000s of hits appear for that one word. You miss some of the joy of the "hunt". I will keep them and share them with my grandchildren....perhaps one of them might like to read a volume or two of these great classic "snap snot" of life in 1988.