Last week, we somehow ended up winning a trivia contest at a bar because my friend Charlie knew the answer to a random question about the history of air conditioning.
This was one of the weirdest things that I have ever heard in my life.
Charlie knows a lot about a lot of things, but I never in a million years thought that he would know anything at all about the history of air conditioning. He actually knew the name of the guy who invented the first air conditioning system, and when he answered correctly, we all just kind of stopped and stared at him in awe and disbelief. At that point, our trivia team was down and if we did not get the answer to this question, we were out of the competition. When I saw what the question was, I thought for sure that we were out. It was a bummer for us too, because we had been doing so well in the competition series. Then, all of a sudden, Charlie rang in. At first, I thought it was a mistake. I thought that he had accidentally pushed his buzzer and that we were completely out of luck. Then, he very confidently answered the question and he knew exactly who the father of modern air conditioning was! I think that my jaw hit the floor when he answered that question correctly. Later on, after we had won the competition, we were all asking Charlie how in the world he’d known the answer to that question. It turned out that his dad was an HVAC technician when he was growing up, and he used to read all about heating and cooling systems for fun back when he was a kid.