i knew that

The Eleven was driving to Trader Joe’s yesterday and having a discussion about H.’s new school when he pointed out that he had someone, a teacher maybe, with a last name he’d never heard of before. He thought it strange – new names and all – and pointed out that even a strange surname like Turvey had been represented by two people in his school back in England. X immediately pointed out that Turvey is a quite popular name in England because “those who used to cut peat in England were known as ‘turveys’”. What the heck? I looked at her as she was driving Galactica, as this little nugget of wisdom was hanging in the air, and murmured a bit too loudly “What the hell do you mean? How would you possibly know that?” But thankfully, just as my query was posed, yet before I could fully poke fun at this new bit of trivia, H. pipes up from the backseat with “What’s peat?” I now think the quiz show is diverted a bit while I continue to contemplate the Turveys of England because I know the peat definition will be more simplistic. But before I have a chance to recover from turvey I'm hit with “peat is like loam.” Ah, problem solved…loam! Peat is like loam, young man. I was now totally lost in a discussion about loam, a word or description of a thing ,of which I’ve never heard. It did however make me think of foreign language teachers who explain one foreign word with another foreign word; you don’t often get too far. In my love’s defense, she has a mind like a trap, especially when it comes to nuggets like turvey and loam and she was merely relating a story from an Englishmen name Turvey who’d explained where the name originated. I, of course, relayed my deep knowledge of names like Baker, Smith, and Shoemaker.

The second part of this enlightenment doubleheader took place as we were reading before bed (me: The Great Derangement / she: Forfeit) and I asked her about Dick Francis and his horse books: Were there chase scenes while riding horses? People running on track with the horses? Horses involved in the murders? Jockeys riding races with guns? You know…the basic stuff. I find out that racing, in general, is the backdrop but everything else is your stock mystery stuff. She tells me he was a jockey when younger. I reply with what seems a normal response, something like, “Oh, he was a jockey?” to which she says “Of course, he was Queen’s Champion!” As if one would know that Mr. Dick Francis (CBE) was a former Queen's Champion jockey and not a turvey in his previous life…

She’s lovely.

t