Things that would have been nice to know.... but what I know instead.

Have y'all ever thought to yourselves: "if only I could get rid of some of this useless information, I would have so much more room for stuff I actually want to know"?

For instance, instead of being able to do taxes and fill out a money order properly in school, they made me learn where the cells in a leaf lie (they're sandwiched in between two layers of epidermal cells, in case you want to know). And guess how useful that information has been throughout my life? Aside from bringing it up right here and now to make my point, IT HAS LITERALLY NEVER COME UP IN MY DAILY LIFE.

Granted, I am only twenty-seven (twenty-eight next month.... oy vey, I'm getting old), but I don't foresee a whole lot of situations down the road where I'm going to need to know this.

Sure, I learned how to do all of those things for myself, but it would have been nice for just one day a teacher to have set us down in any of the years we were there (at least K-12) and be like: "look you little shits, this is what you're learning, because you're not going to be able to function as an adult without it." That would have been some really nice information to have going forward.

Personally, I would rather shoot myself in the foot as opposed to teaching teenagers how to do taxes, or small children the importance of diplomacy, but that's why I didn't choose a career in education (among so many other reasons, but I commend y'all for what you can do #underappreciated).

If I could clear my head of lyrics from every single album of New Kids On The Block, NSYNC, and the Backstreet Boys from 1986 to 2002 then I could probably have room for some really important information that could help me cure an ongoing disease or something. I mean, I probably still wouldn't be smart enough to cure cancer or anything, but I could probably make late stage neurosyphilis pretty tolerable.

There is not a damn thing that I could tell you about Quantum Physics, but I can tell you that Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower belong together. I can also tell you that there's no hyphen in between Campbell and Bower, but I can't actually tell you how to accomplish a field in chemical engineering.

I took all the English and grammar classes known to mankind to learn how to properly structure a paragraph and use correct comma placement and punctuation, but had I known that the world was going to devolve into mass chaos that doesn't care if what they're using is even a legitimate word or not (when did everyone just start abbreviating everything and taking out letters just because?), I could have probably saved that brain space for more pertinent information like "how to survive the next generation." If you want to abbreviate something, that's fine. Use "legit" instead of "legitimate" but have a stopping point.

If I removed all the plot points from every single Terminator movie out of my brainstem I could probably have the space to store the information that tells me how a brainstem actually functions.

What's that old meme saying? "I'm glad I learned about parallelograms instead of how to do taxes. It's really come in handy this parallelogram season." And as I said when we were discussing the leaf cells, I eventually learned how to do my own taxes as an adult, BUT I still can't believe that they just send you out into the world with no clue. Blows my mind.

Speaking of blowing a mind: I can tell you that John McClane's catchphrase is, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherf*cker" but I am not actually smart enough to thwart a villain like Hans Gruber (#RIPAlanRickman).What I can offer you instead is an assortment of Charlie Day's greatest hits.

I thought that I had a decent enough grasp on math to get me through life, but then I started at the job I have now and quickly learned that I KNEW NOTHING. Sure, I've learned over the years, but the fact that that I was thrust into the world with rudimentary math skills is insane. I know all about long division, but can I actually read a categorized bank statement for an entire company? I'm working on it.... it's a process.

My point is, I have all of this useless information just banging around in my head, but it would probably be wiser to clear some of it out to make room for actual important information?

You know what.... screw that. I'd rather be able to bust out into "Step by Step." I'm too old and set in my ways at this point to turn back now. "Step by step, oh, baby, gonna get to you, girl... Step by step, oh, baby, really want you in my world... Step! Hey, girl, in your eyes I see your picture of me all the time..."