What's The First Thing You Know?

SKIPNOTE: Anyone under the age of 50 probably won't get this.



My younger sister Penny pulled this on me several years ago at our parents' 40th wedding anniversary. At the time, she was a disk jockey at a Country station in Seattle (her real name, by the way, is Penny Coyne), and one of the bits she did on her show was a thing called The Impossible Question. She'd ask some random query like, "What's the least number of States you would cross if you drove from Coast to Coast?", and the first one to get the correct answer won some sort of a prize.

Most every time we spoke, I'd ask her what some of the Impossible Questions had been recently. This time she said, "What's the first thing you know?"

"What? What do you mean?"

She just repeated it. "What's the first thing you know?"

"Um-m-m... love."

Immediately she responded with, "No. What's the first thing you know?"

"Movement."

"No. What's the first thing you know?"

"Light"

"No. What's the first thing you know?"

Penny's a bit of a sadist, so this went on for an entire day.) 

"Pressure." 
"No. What's the first thing you know?"
"Taste."
"No. What's the first thing you know?"
"Sounds."
"No. What's the first thing you know?"


Finally, after HOURS of trying to figure this out, I gave up. "Fine. You got me. What's the (there may have been an expletive here) answer???"

She just had this sh*t-eating grin on her face as she said,

"What's the first thing you know?"

"Old Jed's a millionaire!"