What's in a name?

Why "3 Fun Facts"?

My husband, Bill, is an educator, and cannot help but find teachable moments anywhere, anytime.  Whenever we would travel, attend an event, or even go to an amusement park, Bill would tell us all that we had to learn "3 Fun Facts" to share at dinner.  The kids and I learned to roll with it and could easily come up with fun facts by dinnertime.  They were not always momentous, sometimes repetitive, and frequently inaccurate, but hey, we had our 3 Fun Facts.
             
                                                                  

However, when family and friends were sucked into included in our learning moments, they would obsessively stress over their facts.  You could see the sweat starting to bead up on their foreheads.  Will this count as a fact?  Will I remember this information at dinner?  Are my facts going to be fact checked?  Do I need a backup fact in case someone steals my fact?  It was like studying for a final exam that would determine the course of their lives.

I remember one family trip to the Newport Aquarium many, many years ago.  As we were walking through the front gate Bill told everyone to be sure and have their "3 Fun Facts" ready to recite at dinner. The kids and I took the assignment in stride, no big deal. The panic within the rest of the family (especially the adults) was palpable and made for some very interesting "facts" at dinner.  For example, my brother's contribution included "the line at the ticket booth is much shorter at 3pm than at 9am", my nephew shared "never travel anywhere with a teacher", and my sister-in-law added a commentary on the size of Keiko's dork (of "Free Willy" fame).  Oh my!




Bill knew that he had finally won the family over when several years later my brother and sister-in-law while traveling in Mexico sent us a postcard that included their three fun facts at the bottom of the card.  Bill's work is done.  Thank you very much.
 
So here are my 3 Fun Facts for today:

1.  Creating and embedding a map on this blog is not intuitively obvious.
2.  3 Fun Facts has had 8 page views.
3.  The correct terminology for a whale's private parts is dork.