Trivia

“Eccentrics may be off center, but they tend to be extraordinarily healthy, both mentally and physically.” So says a specialist who studies “people who are different.” It’s not their weaknesses but their strengths that pull them into unusual behavior patterns, says this authority. Oftentimes among their strengths is an obsessive curiosity. There are eccentrics who cannot leave unopened mail on their desks.

Richard Pryor named his daughter “Rain.” Barbara Hershey named her son “Free.” Grace Slick named her daughter “God.”

Claim is the world’s potato fields are so subject to minimonstrous blights that they require more pesticides and herbicides than any other food crop.

Q. What gives your Love and War man the absurd idea that a lot of women would rather be among the several wives of a rich man in luxury than the only wife of a poor man in poverty?

A. History. It has been a common attitude in the East, Near and Far, for centuries. There, many a wife encouraged her husband to take a second and third wife to share the work and to give her somebody to oversee.

Psychologists say objects look darker when you’re depressed.

Tag Samuel Goldwyn with this one, too: “If I could drop dead right now, I’d be the happiest man alive.”