There are several cultural touchstones I remain rather ignorant of, despite countless references to them throughout my six decades of existence.

Peter Pan, for example. As a child, I ate plenty of his peanut butter, saw the animated Tinker Bell at the start and end of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color (a lie broadcast weekly into our home, which didn’t have a color television until 1973), and my mother had a phonograph record by Mary Martin with a photograph on the album’s back showing her flying across a room as the character in the 1950s musical.

However, I never saw the animated Disney film or the Peter Pan plays or musicals, and despite being an avid reader, I never read a Peter Pan book. So while I can recognize some of the Disney characters, I don’t know their stories. I did see the Spielberg film Hook in 1991, but I was somewhat mystified by the crocodile and other plot elements.

The character first appeared in Chapter XIV of J.M. Barrie’s 1902 book The Little White Bird, followed by the 1904 play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, and the 1911 novelization Peter and Wendy. Disney’s animated film came out in 1953 and was re-released in cinemas in 1958, 1969, 1976, 1982, and 1989. I was too young to see the June 1969 re-release, and I was almost ten when it came back around in June 1976, and by then, it was far too juvenile to interest me. Nowadays, many parents can readily make it, or virtually any other suitable film, available to their children at the appropriate age, but I missed out.

My wife is named Wendy, a name which became quite popular in the second half of the 20th century due to the character of Wendy Darling in Peter Pan. Yet my knowledge of the story is so limited, despite its many related works, that I had to go look up that character’s last name.

I contemplated this when the YouTube algorithm coughed up The mystery hidden in Disney’s Peter Pan from the Once Upon a Record channel. I was duly impressed by the movie excerpt of the child characters flying over London.

The video went on to theorize that the father character might be the son of Captain Hook. However, none of that is enough to motivate me to watch the movie nor actively partake of any of the multitude of other media offerings about a boy who won’t grow up.

Similarly, I only read a part of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as an adult, although I’ve seen documentaries about the author and countless references to it in a variety of media over the years, including the original Star Trek series, Tom Petty music videos, and the science fiction short story Mimsy Were the Borogroves, which drew upon a verse from the poem “Jabberwocky” in Lewis Carroll’s sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

The story was simply too bizarre to hold my interest. My dissatisfaction reminds me of my disappointment with the Land of Oz.

Back in 2009, I bought and read Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, not realizing it was a dark revisionist fantasy with quite mature themes. I didn’t like it one bit; Dominic Noble didn’t like it, either.

I followed that distasteful experience with downloading and reading L. Frank Baum’s original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. While it was interesting to note the various differences from the beloved classic movie, I didn’t care for that book, either. It was too nonsensical and disjointed for my taste.

I’m also somewhat ignorant of less fantastic cultural touchstones. I’d wager that while most of us are quite familiar with the basic plot and characters of Robin Hood, few have actually read Howard Pyle’s influential The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood from 1883, let alone the various earlier ballads. I certainly haven’t.

Rather, we likely know the story from countless other references and adaptations. Some of us saw the 1938 movie with Errol Flynn, and perhaps younger generations associate it with 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and/or Mel Brooks’ 1993 parody.

Myself, I’m more partial to Monty Python’s Dennis Moore sketch.

Similarly, I’m often ignorant of the origins of various memes that populate the internet. Recently, several of the video channels I watch on YouTube have used inserts like these to indicate a passage of time:

At first, I thought they might be imitating CuriousMarc, a French electrical engineer who documents restorations of exceptional vintage electronics. But then I noticed the meme on channels that certainly wouldn’t be referencing anything that nerdy. So I looked it up and found out they are taken from the SpongeBob SquarePants television show.

Wendy once had me watch an episode, but it definitely wasn’t to my taste. Similarly, I doubt that I’ve ever seen a complete episode of The Simpsons despite its hundreds of episodes since 1989. I’ve seen various clips, which I often found funny, but they were hardly engaging enough to tempt me to watch the series. Gosh, whenever I hear Marge, I think of Brenda Morgenstern from Rhoda.

I haven’t discerned any meaningful handicaps from my cultural ignorance. I’m fine with remaining unable to recognize any Taylor Swift songs, opera librettos, or many sports references. As I approach retirement, I’m skeptical about investing my forthcoming free time in such pursuits; FOMO is not healthy.

Freedom to choose your own life; freedom to pursue your own interest; freedom to enjoy your own likes, provided they are not harmful to you and the society. I feel I was very fortunate to grow up with so much of freedom, like a tree in the forest…

-Sudha Marty, How I Taught My Grand Mother to Read: And Other Stories