Point of View: Time for ‘Jeopardy!’

“Where’s the brief?” I asked Mary after we’d seen a somewhat long film about Stephen Hawking, who wrote “A Brief History of Time,” which I’ve taken the time to peruse again in an effort to constantly expand my consciousness, just like the universe.

“You see,” I said when asked what I’d learned, “there could have been this singularity, which they’ve called the Big Bang,” I said with a wink, “from which the universe was formed, but the discovery of black holes may posit a Big Crunch as well, not a pleasant thought. Or . . . or there may never have been a singularity, which would mean the universe would have had no beginning nor would it have an end, which would leave a Creator out of the equation.”

Cutting to the chase, she said she thought the actor who played Stephen Hawking had a wonderful twinkle in his eye, and I said that the actress who played Jane, his first-wife-to-be, was quite fetching.

As for the whys and wherefores of the universe, I said, “All I think we can say with any certainty is, ‘It is,’ to which I’d add that, while I’m not very intelligent, I know, thanks to you, what love is, and that that’s the most important thing, the Grand Unified Theory as far as I’m concerned. Tennis is a distant second.”

As for life, now that the subject had come up, I said I wish at times it were simpler — so much of it is so much of an ado about nothing — and that there were some certainties as to its whys and wherefores and hereafter.

But then what Bob Schaeffer often says came to mind, to wit, that “the hours have passed, and, before you know it, it’s time for ‘Jeopardy!’ ”