What have we learned?

I was thinking the other day, because Larry and I were watching Jerry Springer: The Opera –

which was his idea, I warned him –

and I have to preface this by explaining that my sister and I saw Jerry Springer: The Opera live on tour in, like, 2008, and we had the exact same reaction that Larry had, which seems to be the same reaction that other people tend to have –

which is that the first twenty minutes are hilarious and then it suddenly stops being fun.

"They're not giving us anything new," Larry said, right after Baby Jane finished her aria. "We just saw this with the first group of Jerry Springer guests, and they aren't expanding on it in any way. Can you skip ahead and see if it gets better?"

"It doesn't," I said, but I skipped ahead until we got to the part with the tap-dancing Klan, at which point Larry said "stop, let's see that," and I said "you won't like it," and we stopped and he said "oh, it's just Springtime for Hitler," and then we sang "Springtime for Hitler" over the Klan song, which not only works harmonically but also takes you right up to the point where they pause the song and make a horrible rhythmic joke.

And we were disappointed, because it had been fun and then it wasn't anymore, and then I remembered that I had written about this when I wrote about why we loved Hundreds of Beavers:

FUN = PROVIDING UNFORGETTABLY NEW INFORMATION CONTINUOUSLY.

Which, you know, I still think that's true, and I wouldn't have learned it if I hadn't asked myself why we had so much fun watching Hundreds of Beavers, and I definitely wouldn't have learned it if I hadn't given myself two hours and 2,000 words to figure it out.

THIS

IS

WHY

WE

KEEP

JOURNALS.

It also made me want to sum up some of the most important things I'd learned in this particular phase of my ongoing diary, which seem to be as follows:

• Problem-solving describes the process of going from guessing to knowing.
• Quality describes the ability to provide new information with every interaction.
• Fun describes the experience of learning unforgettably new information continuously.
• Love describes the superpositional state of seeing a person at both zero and one and actively wanting them to get to one.

The phrase "actively wanting" seems incorrect; I don't want to use "helping" here, because it implies that love is a nudge and it also suggests that the only way you can love someone is directly (which I may sort of believe? can you love the neighbor you have never met? you can hope they'll resolve into a positive state but is that the same thing?).

I'd really like to use a phrase that reflects the role of the observer in a superposition but I don't know quite enough quantum mechanics.

Could it be "Love describes the superpositional state of observing a person at both zero and one and having a positive effect?"

That would at least give you the pun on "positive," ha ha.

Let me think about this some more, and if you have any ideas you can always email me at nicole@nicolediekerfinley.com, and also do keep journals but don't bother watching Jerry Springer: The Opera, that is what we learned today.