So a couple of the girls at work corner me this morning and ask me what “gingham” means. I confessed upfront to being a little fuzzy, but offered that I thought it was some sort of light material, typically with a pattern.

They informed me that it was a checked pattern, often found on material, but the pattern was what was “gingham”. They then went on to explain that I was being recorded in their survey of men who do and don’t know what gingham is.

Apparently there are three buckets:

Those who know (damn few apparently)

Those who think they know but are, in fact, as wrong about this as they are about everything and are the reason women think men are dumber than table legs in the first place (I got put here)

Those who admit to not knowing but rationalize their ignorance by claiming it’s useless information anyway (these are the same guys who can usually list all 3,264 sponsors of any given NASCAR driver).

So hanging my head in shame I slink back to my cubicle and seek solace in a dictionary. It turns out gingham is very specifically a yarn-dyed woven cotton fabric. The typical pattern is just the natural result of weaving different colored threads, but ginghams can be in solid colors. It’s all how you dye it.

So while I still wasn’t correct either, I’m taking minor pride in bringing down the list-making women. And yes, I recognize that this is also the sort of behavior which causes women to think men are just stupid… but hey, I’m a guy. I can’t help it.

Sometimes you find things enroute to seeking other things. Last night was one of those times. I ran across a $25 Savings Bond which my great-grandparents had given me as a birth present in 1961. I had pretty much forgotten the bond even existed, but finding it got me to wondering what it might be worth.

Of course there is a web site which will tell you the current and future value of savings bonds. So I get there and find that this particular bond stopped earning interest altogether after 40 years. Unfortunately for me, that was a few years ago. But the good news is that the $25 is now worth $201 and change.

That seemed pretty cool. But after a fashion, it just got me to wondering again. An 8x return seems pretty good, but there’s 40-odd years of inflation baked in there as well. What would $201 today be worth in 1961 dollars? Turns out it’s only about $35, which sounds paltry. But this was a time when gas was a quarter/gallon and you could buy a decent house for under $20k. It might be more useful to go the other way. The bond originally cost $18 to purchase in 1961. That $18 today is about $101.

So the good news is that my ancestors weren’t cheap. That’s a substantive gift. The bad news is that in 40 years I only doubled the money. Not too exciting from a financial perspective, but then again, a damn sight better than the stock market has done this year!