The main problem with Conventional Wisdom is not only that it is not wise, but that it is often contradictory, hence unreliable, and, therefore, however conventional it is assumed to be, it is sheer folly to let it be a guide for life or for any pursuit. Conventional Wisdom has it that “You are what you eat.”  If this were true, then my dog Belle would be a bed-settee, which, patently, she is not.  

It has also been said that “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” but this bit of Conventional Wisdom was mangled by Ambrose Bierce who insists that “A bird in the hand is worth what you can get for it.”  That is, of course, a matter of interpretation, and depends on whether you want to eat the bird in the hand or sell it.  Either way, neither statement has anything to do with intrinsic value.  They are intended only to illustrate that there are more ways than one of looking at those things we glibly quote as if we were handing down divine wisdom from the top of Mount Olympus or Horeb-Sinai.  

Questioning Conventional Wisdom whenever it makes its appearance, is usually disruptive, and the disputant is often denounced, tacitly or volubly, as trouble-maker, wit, idiot, or arrogant.  For example, when during the course of a narrative tale about the moral meanderings of a friend – always a perfect subject for gossip – someone injects what should be the discussion-ending truism, “Out of sight, out of mind,” the wit solemnly parries with, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder!”

The very fact that the first pronouncement has been so roundly controverted by an equally cogent piece of Conventional Wisdom is profoundly disturbing because it is perceived that an irresistible force has met an immovable object with catastrophic results.  A deafening silence ensues, and the meeting breaks up in disgruntlement.

The controversially adept arm themselves aforehand to be at the ready so that whenever someone trots out a fragment of Conventional Wisdom, little dreaming that a solid refutation is lying in wait like a steel bear trap to snap off their legs, they have the proper riposte that never fails to disarm the announcer.  It might be that at some time in the future when the world has tired of conventional Olympic sports, such as running, jumping, hurling, throwing, swimming, boxing, riding, leaping, wrestling, shooting, vaulting, and bouncing, the new categories might include the Refutation of Conventional Wisdom.

I see this in precognitive vision.  The final round has two Refuters from different wings of the Conventional Wisdom continuum.  These disputants get their final rubs down, and then step into the ring, each one primed, loaded for bear, and going for gold.

After the usual hyperbole that is embarrassingly false, the pair approaches the centre of the field, to the place designated as the bully-off point.  It will be remarked that no special equipment apart from that found at the old conventional Olympic games has been made available for what is now called The Sport of Kings, so references that might be familiar in others contests may occasionally be noted.  These will not be diversionary to those who are keen in the pursuit of the latest form of mass excitement.  

The International Board of Six Referees speaks to the sparring pair, emphasising the usual cautions against intemperate language, foreign words and phrases, too many initials, and 

A: [Starting low]  

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder!”

B: [Thinking, ‘Is that all you got?’]

“Out of sight, out of mind!”

The first round completed, the tongue-tagging twosome return to their respective corners.  The Conventional Wisdom aficionados who have crammed the stadium for this event are not impressed.  A few clap twice or thrice, feebly, out of politeness.

In the dressing room, seconds and cut-men waft towels over the combatants, although neither has broken into a sweat.  They are left-overs from some other, now non-Olympic, sport, and act out of instinct rather than from need.  After the mandatory rest period the conflictees square up in the middle of the ring ready for the next round.  A hush falls over the hundred thousand strong crowd.

A: [Visibly bracing himself]

“Too many cooks spoil the broth!”  [He grins broadly, believing that he has gained the ascendancy].

B: [Shrugging insouciantly obviously unworried by B’s full frontal assault].

“Many hands make light work!”

A’s supporters emit long, low groans, while B’s fans break out into stamping and shouting until the International Board of Six Referees calls for silence by waving The Books of Platitudes, Volumes 1-5, wildly in the direction of the stands.  Apart from the increasingly heavy breathing of the contestants, a concentrated hush descends and stills the frantic scene.  

The seconds fill the water bottles and play with adrenaline swabs of various dimensions.  One of A’s seconds absentmindedly puts one into his mouth and is promptly counted out by a member of the crowd.  

Time hangs heavy in the air.  The atmosphere is charged.  The mood electric, pregnant with expectation.  The warriors return to the ocke.  

A: [Grimacing]

“The grass is always greener the other side of the fence!”

B: [Suddenly breathing easier]

“There’s no place like home!”

The crowd goes wild, the divided factions claiming victory for their man.  The seconds are working feverishly trying to come up with more gems of Conventional Wisdom for their man to throw at his rival.  It was scheduled for six rounds – the maximum any previous Conventional Wisdom and Wit Final had ever gone was four.  Would history be re-written tonight?  The rest period over, it was now time for B to go first at what would be, if the fight went to its full term, the halfway mark.  

B: [Exuding confidence]

“Many a true word is spoken in jest!”

A: [His face drains of blood.  It takes on the pallid aspect of a wrong-way-round jigsaw puzzle whose pieces do not fit together.  Clearly, he is in trouble].   

“Er … ”

[The Board of Referees looks at itself, nods at itself, and notifies the Timekeeper to start the countdown.  A has ten seconds to come up with a better answer than “Er … ”

“Er … “

Timekeeper:

“ … seven, eight, nine TEN!”

The gathering goes wild.  B grins his way back to his corner, and A has to be helped by his seconds, his cut man, and two St John’s Ambulance Brigade volunteers.  On my score card he is three rounds even and a whole round down and he has to do better or scuttle back home awash with failure and obscurity.  

B is comfortable with his fourth round win, and is mentally spending the prize money for taking the gold away from the favourite.  His seconds are making suggestion to him to help him devastate his antagonist in round five.  

The assembly is agog, never having seen a battle of such proportions and lengths before.  Several are on their mobile telephone devices ordering their tickets for the next Olympic Word Games.  Reporters gush superlatives press-ganged to serve as extraordinary adjectives to their respective papers, and press camera flashes illuminate the tense spectacle.  

The air is thick with anticipation; peanut vendors have fallen silent to fix their gaze on the centre of the arena, where two giants of Conventional Wisdom will soon step up to their marks, hoping to draw the battle towards a conclusion in his own favour.  

The contestants come up to scratch for the penultimate round.  A hush falls over the thousands so that apart from a coach full of chronic asthmatics, who have travelled from the Damplands, there is silence so eerie that Stephen King wanted to buy it for his next horror film.  Their eyes meet, but neither betrays the emotions that must be bursting to escape.  Only a small pulse – imperceptible except to industrially trained dental technicians – on A’s forehead, shows the tension that he feels.  B is cool, calm, and collected.  

B: [Knowing that, having mentally spent the prize money, he must now win it, so that he can spend it again, speaks deliberately].

“It never rains, but it pours!”

His supporters rise exulting, singing “We are the Champions … ”  The International Board of Six Referees calls for silence again, this time waving the ten volume set of Rolfe Harris’s autobiography, “I’ll Be a Duck-Billed Platitude!”  Silence, of the stunned variety, immediately ensues.  Harris, who was spotted earlier near the high diving board tying his kangaroos down, is still a force to be reckoned with.  

All eyes turn to watch A, who is gurning like a man with a sweet tooth who has found a pickled onion in his bag of sugared Bon-Bons.  He looked up at the ceiling for inspiration, but the warped panel boards offer nothing.  He repeatedly mouths, “It never rains … ” trying to get a fix on a contradiction.  Then, as if the light has been turned on, he gasps,

“It’s raining cats and dogs!”

B’s supporters laugh heartily, some, forgetful of where they are, actually guffaw, but A’s supporters groan like the long last note of a grand organ in its death throes that that refuses to go quietly   

“Ruling!  Ruling!  Ruling!” chants the assemblage.  The International Board of Six Referees looks at itself and then put its head together to consider a ruling.  The determination rests on whether A’s refutationary contribution actually opposed B’s emphatic statement, or whether it was simply a matter of saying much the same thing only in a different way, and since contradiction was at the heart of the contest, it didn’t look too good for A.  

A had returned to his corner and was butting his head against what had once been goal post.  His corner had considered trying to stop him, but the glance they shot between themselves said, “Let him bash his brains out.  How much worse can it get?”  So, although they didn’t actually help him thrust his head against the metal upright, they did not exactly discourage him from doing so.  

In fact, to show that he was not entirely out of sympathy with him, one of his cut men asked, “Do you feel any better now,” when he had slumped to the ground, semi-conscious, after his frenzy of self-inflicted injuries.  However, sympathy was not a universal attribute enjoyed by all his squad, and it was learned later that two of them had sent written application to B’s corner to seek employment on his crew.  

Eventually the ruling was handed own.  The round was, unanimously, given to B.  After that announcement, nothing much happened for a while.  In the auditorium lit only by those lights that hang over snooker tables, the sound of sweets being unwrapped and nuts being cracked and munched could be heard above a low murmur of the astonished as they went to work unwrapping toffees from crinkly paper, sucking boiled sweets, herbal tablets, and crunching monkey nuts.  

“Rrrrrrrrrrringgggggggggggggg!” went the timekeeper’s bell, signalling the ultimate round, but A stayed in his corner, not looking at B who was jumping up and down in the centre of the rink to keep warm after what seems to him to be an eternity of inactivity.  

An elderly lady, who I learned afterwards was his mother, threw him a boiled sweet from which she had removed the wrapping paper, which would have been impossible for him to accomplish as he was, like his competitor, and, for reasons not altogether clear, wearing a pair of twenty-seven ounce boxing gloves.  

A’s refusal to leave his corner went badly for him.  He was charged with bringing the game into disrepute, of non-violence of the tongue, and with abuse of equipment.  Whether this last referred to the metal goalpost or his head was not made clear.  However, the IOC determined that the manner of his abandonment of the tournament was not in keeping with the ideals of the Olympic movement, and he was not given any award.  

The silver went to the man who would have taken the bronze, and the bronze went to the man that the bronze had just nudged out of the medals and who was already back home enjoying his disgrace, his fiancée had broken off their engagement, his boss had given his job to someone else, and his landlord had let his own niece have his apartment.  

But, with the award of the bronze this defeated fellow's fortunes went swiftly into reverse.  His boss reinstated him, gave him his own office and a raise in pay, his former landlord let him have his apartment back at a reduced rent, and he married the landlord’s niece. 

His former fiancée joined the cast of Coronation Street and has not been heard of since.  Rumour has it that she is trying to get Amy Turtle reinstated into Crossroads and it is not going down well with the TV bosses.  

B got his gold medal, returned home to a hero’s welcome, was disappointed with the prize money, bought a smallholding in Wiltshire and settled down to raise a pig.  He did not enter a Refutation of Conventional Wisdom competition ever again, wanting to retire while he was at the very pinnacle of his sport.  

As the saying goes, “All’s well that ends well!”  

Copyright © 2006 – Ronnie Bray

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED