A witch cursed me at the county fair when I was three because I corrected her Latin using my brand-new encyclopedia. She said, “Enjoy your last update, nerd,” and bam—now all my knowledge is sourced from the 1993 Encyclopedia Britannica, Deluxe Print Edition, 32 volumes. Plus index.

At first, it was awesome. I knew everything. Like every single winner of the 1992 Summer Olympics. That women’s rights were finally guaranteed since Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s appointment to the Supreme Court. And a bangin’ summary of the Iran Contra affair. You think anyone else in prekindergarten knew what “detente” was? No. I ruled.

But now it’s 2025, and everything I know is still from the 1993 Encyclopedia Britannica, Deluxe Print Edition, 32 volumes. Plus index. My knowledge ends with Bush Sr. and a cautious optimism about compact discs. People ask me questions like “What’s a meme?” And I say, “Ah yes, a theoretical unit of cultural transmission proposed by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene,” and they just stare at me.

My professors hate me because I can only cite one source, which is the 1993 Encyclopedia Britannica. My friends hate me since I never remember their birthdays because they were all born before 1993, but none of them were significant enough to make it into the Britannica. My cousin from Belgrade hates me because I keep calling him Yugoslavian. I assume it’s because they’ve probably rebranded to something sleeker, like “Neo-Slavia.”

I wish there was some sort of worldwide information superhighway that I could use to rapidly look up everything that’s happened in the last thirty-two years. Here is a list of things I know how to do: send faxes, build a trebuchet, and recite the full text of the U.S. Constitution¹. Here is a list of things I do not know how to do because my knowledge is so outdated: The list is empty, because I don’t know what I don’t know. And neither does the Britannica. That is the whole freaking point!! On an unrelated note, dating has been pretty hard. Partly because of my curse, but mostly because I’m gay and homosexual marriage is still banned in all fifty states.