Living in the Age of TMI

My prankster friend Barney is a grandfather these days. His son has a daughter, Ivy, who a year or so ago, attacked him from the pram — unwittingly, of course, when she flung an arm outward and knocked his cup of scalding coffee all over his lap, singeing him in several unmentionable places that he was too embarrassed to be demonstrative about in the public glare of a food court. He said at the time, with forced good humour, that the label ‘Poison’ should have been appended before her name and it would have only been appropriate.

Now of course, all is forgiven and Barney reckons he wants to do, as granddad, what he never got a chance to do as a father — which is, spend more time chatting with the young one, “grooming them with early knowledge etc etc”.

Barney’s son, by the way, is a remarkably polite, courteous and friendly person which leaves me wondering privately if we make too much of this guilt thing about not being there 24/7 for our children and, therefore, being made to pay for our negligence by being more — overly — attentive to the grandchildren.

Anyhow, Barney is filling little Ivy with information of all kinds which of course he forces himself to read up first. Privately, I have always felt sorry for youngsters denied a childhood by ambitious, goals-driven parents but that’s just my opinion and I certainly don’t foist it upon Barney. Not even when he tells me, over our customary cup of coffee at the mall, that he’s going to be talking science today to little Ivy.

In his reading — or tireless research, as Barney likes to call it — he’s come across the term ‘plica semilunaris’. He says it two or three times obviously to impress me into asking what on earth it means. He touches the corner of his eye, pulling at it slightly with his finger and pointing. “See that little pink bulb of skin, Kev? That’s it. That’s your plica semilunaris,” he informs me, adding, “It has two functions. It assists with draining tears and it gives the eye greater freedom of movement. Without it the eyes moves will be restricted.”

“Thanks Barney,” I say, but Barney is not quite finished.

“In us humans,” he carries on, “this is an evolved form of what in other creatures is known as the nictitating membrane, or the third eyelid. Fish have it, birds have it and reptiles too but we no longer do. Ah, ha, not entirely true. Except for the ... can you guess?”

“No, and I sense you are going to leave me even more informed, Barney?”

Sarcasm is like water on a ducks back, it rolls off.

“The Calabar angwantibo,” he says.

“What?”

“It’s like a loris and is the only primate left that has a plica semilunaris. Calabar, by the way, is a city in Nigeria. But of course you knew that?” The Calabar angwantibo, I am informed, doesn’t inhabit this Nigerian city exclusively. It is also found in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. It has orange fur on its back and a distinct white line on its forehead.

“TMI, which as you know Barney is Too Much Information” I say, throwing up my hands. “Enough, Barney. I’ll be suffering information overload if you give me one more fact. Stop please.”

“Ah, but you see that’s the difference between you and Ivy. Your mind has stopped being a sponge. Ivy’s is going to soak up all this knowledge and come back in a tick wanting more.” He’s got a point there. Anyhow, back at my place, I wiki plica semilunaris and Calabar angwantibo and find that Barney has obtained all his facts pretty much off these pages. So much for tireless research! I also learn from my own reading that with Calabar angwantibos mating takes place hanging upside down from a branch. Long after all this, however, I am amazed at how antlered and branched research is, how one fact leads to another and another.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.