Question: How many bassoons are there?

Things like the internet are sort of beyond our ability to comprehend. Turns out that the universe is way bigger than we ever imagined. People are even wearing black shoes with brown pants these days. Somehow we all manage to deal with this stuff. But today’s question brings us beyond our collective comprehension into an unknown world.

Picture 45,000 bassoons in one place at one time. You can’t. Why? Type in “bassoon image” into Google and you’ll be gifted with over 5,000,000 photos.

You’re probably thinking “Wow, I didn’t realize that this obscure double reed wood wind instrument has been a popular resurgence in 2022.” And you’d be dead wrong. Turns out there haven’t been 5,000,000 bassoons produced in all of history.

The MET has an interesting bassoon in its collection and it’s such a popular item that they don’t even have it on display. But hey, you can buy one here at Walmart for about a thousand bucks. Have all the double-reed fun you want.

So just how many bassoons are currently circulating out there? The answer is either more or less than you may think. We set out to properly research this question but since bassoons don’t have anything to do with electric cars, pandemics, or Tik Tok, we couldn’t get anyone to fund actual research.

But if you were to add up every member in every bassoon related group on all of Facebook, you would get about 25,000 people. Since most of those members are in every group, the actual number is closer to 10,000 individual people. It’s hard to tell. Bassoonists are an illusive bunch. Just check out this story for proof.

If you fancy yourself a bassoonist, then don’t be illusive and send us your thoughts of how we can organize the greatest meeting of bassoons in history. If we can deal with gravity and poor fashion on a daily basis, surely we can figure this one out. I’ll rent the stadium.

Answer: There are not enough bassoons to fill the seats in a stadium. And even if there were, there aren’t enough people to play them all.