Guinness Anyone

Society has a need to “Guinness record” everything from the fastest land animal (the cheetah) to the worlds longest finger nails (Lee Redmond, nearly 28½ feet - ewww, gross.)

In some way we are in awe of record holders and that’s nice.  But records are made to be broken and when that happens we change our allegiance.  The king is dead, long live the king.

We as a species have kept tabs on time and events ever since we picked up a piece of chalk and decorated our caves.

Shakespeare wrote about ‘recorded time’ and its inevitable effect in Macbeth.  And although I love the quote for the sake of mankind I must dispute and disagree with the last line.  Sorry Willie!

But while it is important to record history, especially mistakes made lest we repeat them it is also important to note that not all records are important, although even this is subjective.

Surely there is someone out there who is actively seeking ways of ingesting more calcium in his or her diet in order to grow longer more unbreakable nails so as to replace the above referenced Ms. Redmond.

President Obama will always have the distinction of being the first African American President of the United States and that is a fact.  Is it also a record to be broken?  Of course not.  But we can note that other countries appear to have beaten us to this particular punch.  They have also elected competent women to lead their nation.  Unfortunately we have yet to realize the error of excluding 51% of our population from consideration in that role.

Side note: I truly hope with all my being that we do not rectify this omission by so honoring anyone from the current crop of celebrities ranting on Republican platforms.  I trust you know of whom I speak.

There are degrees of value to any news item.  If this were not true then “Page Six” would not appear on most newspapers.  And just as mankind has always searched for patterns in any stellar formation in the sky we are certain to make note of record breaking performances.  They allow us to pigeonhole events in a neat orderly manner making it easy to trot them out for future comparisons.

For years and for reasons unknown to pollsters at the time Presidents Buchanan, Harding, Pierce and Fillmore jockeyed for the honor (?) of being the worst President ever.  Many of us feel our 43^rd entry into the category will easily break that logjam but we will have to wait for history to show that fact.  Certainly his Vice President would win a similar category.

  

However one record that will continue to be broken from this day forward is the number of records we keep and the number of people who will be blogging about them!

But don’t take my word for it, after all I am not Guinness, although on occasion I have one.

(Please note; no records were broken or harmed in any way as a result of the publishing of this blog.)