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Troy Jackson was a three-sport athlete in high school, which is impressive. But what’s more impressive is that he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica as a kid – eleven times from start to finish.
“I read the entire set from letter A to letter Z,” said Jackson, who grew up in a small town near Raleigh, North Carolina, and talked to everyone an inch or less from their faces. “I wasn’t just a versatile athlete. I loved to learn and I would read those Encyclopedias day and night not just to become smarter, but because I found the content in those sources endlessly fascinating. People called me the Sage Southerner.”
In first grade, he started reading the A book and got all wrapped up in antelopes, aardvarks, and ants. In second grade he pored through the B book cramming into his head all kinds of fascinating nuggets about baboons, balloons, babies, and Botswana.
“I remember one story about baby baboons blowing balloons in Botswana,” he said. “I couldn’t believe the story was true but after reading Sammy Sportface I’ve come to realize anything could be true.”
TJack’s fourth-grade teacher found out about her student’s
fetish for Encyclopedias and asked him to give a presentation to the class. He chose the letter E.
“E is the most used letter in the English language,” said TJack. “The E-book was the thickest and I loved reading that one the most because it enriched my vocabulary exponentially. I remember reading about Eddie Munster, Edgar Allen Poe, Ernie on “My Three Sons,” Eddie Haskell, “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Ernie DiGregorio, eavesdropping, and Earth. The coolest of all that was Edgar Allen Poe. Did you know he wrote The Tell-Tale Heart? What a dreadful storyline. Poe was Sammy Sportface before Sportface but much more skilled with the language and more upbeat.”
When he presented to his fourth-grade classmates, TJack got up in the faces of each one of them, no more than one inch from their faces, and raved about the letter E and the way everything important seemed to begin with the letter E or at least have the letter E in it somewhere because every word has to have a vowel and there are only five vowels.
“I shared with them the story I read about Elvis Presley, who kicked the bucket while sitting on his toilet,” he said. “The teacher told me to tone it down and to stop talking so close to everybody’s faces. Spit shot out of my mouth and they were having to wipe their faces with their hands many of them left for the lavatory to dry up and sit on the johnboy for a while. My intensity about reading Encyclopedias wigged them out. I liked intimidating them with my intensity about Encyclopedia reading.”
When he got to Wake Forest University, he continued to read Encyclopedias while living in the Pika House. One night he was joined there by Nuge, who also voraciously read Encyclopedias as a kid, rocked a 3.5 GPA after his sophomore year, then stopped taking exams, sold vacuum cleaners, painted houses, and 37 years later graduated from Wake.
Last weekend TJack met up with Sportface during pre-game hype before the Wake Forest choke against North Carolina.
“So TJack, when you read the S Encyclopedia did you read up on Sammy Sportface?” I asked.
“They don’t include fake sports bloggers in Encyclopedias,” said TJack as he crammed his face into Sportface’s nose. “Plus Sportface didn’t exist back then. But if he had, I would have skipped that part. I don’t waste time reading about people who pretend to be someone they’re not, and hype up Wake Forest football to the top of McCreary Tower, then turn on them once they lose a game making it all one gigantic farce.”
“Hey TJack, did you know Sammy Sportface used to sell Encyclopedias door to door?”
“Liar.”
“It’s true. Nuge and I would double-team people. He would show up with his vacuum cleaners and me with the Encyclopedias. Nuge wouldn’t sell anything and neither would I. So we would go get high.”
“Oh yeah, I used to get high with you,” he said. “Then the three of us would read Encyclopedias simultaneously to see how confused and disturbed we could make ourselves. I usually went with T for Troy, you read S for Sportface, and Nuge would read N for Nuge. My whole life has revolved around reading Encyclopedias. Tonight before the game, I read about the delayed run-pass option mesh in the D, R, P O, and M books.”
“Did it say the offense is dead?”
“Yes, in the D book under the dead entries there was a picture of Sammy Sportface with a caption: “This is the guy who overhyped the delayed run-pass option mesh offense, rendering it useless.”
“Was there a cross-reference to the S book?”
“No, there was a cross-reference to the A book. When I went there, I read about assholes.”
Author Profile
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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