Last night I went to bed around 9 PM. This is not a norm for me. I woke up feeling quite rested and a little thirsty. I figured I would grab a quick drink of water and then hop in the shower. Actually, I stopped hopping in the shower a few years ago after breaking my big toe.
Anyway, I made my way to the sink and realized I would not be hopping in or out of the shower. It was 10:48 PM. I had slept for a total of 148 minutes.
I wondered why I was thirsty, googled ‘why do people wake up for water’ and learned it doesn’t matter why I’m thirsty, what matters is this glass of water will improve my health.
“Nice,” I thought. “Two birds, one stone. I’m now healthier and wiser. Poor Richard, aka Ben Franklin, woke up pretty early to craft that gem of a phrase, ‘Early to bed and early to rise makes a healthy wealthy and wise.'”
It was then I decided to check my bank account to see if I was wealthy. Nope.
I moved on to checking my email. Nothing exciting. Not even a letter from someone in Nigeria announcing my new found wealth and bank account.
My next step was to check the origin of this widely known expression. It was then I discovered that Benjamin Franklin had a pen name, Poor Richard. Kind of ironic that Poor Richard speaks of being healthy wealthy and wise. That said, Grigio Girl did get up for a glass of water, not a glass of wine.
As I read the origin I learned that Carl Sandburg once changed the phrase, ‘Early to bed and early to rise and you never meet any prominent people.’ I think I agree with Carl more so then Ben. Looking around I saw zero prominent people in my house (I guess I should have looked in the mirror, but I would have been blinded by bed head).
Although I’m not wealthy or chatting it up with the people of Prominence, waking up early this ‘morning’ did provide me a wealth of knowledge which I paired with a healthy glass of tap water.
“Am I none the wiser?” I asked myself. Then I googled, ‘origin of none the wiser.’
After all of this gallimaufry (look it up, become wiser), I decided to go back to bed. I fell asleep reminiscing about the many sleepless nights I spent perusing musty Encyclopaedias Britannica. For those of you who don’t speak Latin, that’s ‘British Encyclopedias.’
It was this morning, when I woke up ‘for real’ and googled ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ that I realized I’ve been online cheating on my British bookfriend. I felt so dirty. Getting a little googly eyed can so quickly change a steady, trusted, long-term relationship.
Sad fact: Encyclopaedia Britannica stopped printing the sets in 2012, after 244 years of making people wiser. I’m guessing if they were still printing you could find this fact in Volume 18, Eggplant – Endoscopy. Want to learn more? Visit Britannica.com.