I know earlier that someone mentioned the Trival Pursuit game. I'm trying so hard to get that game. My friends and mother have agreed to play with me if I ever get it. Key word being...IF. I have yet to see it giftwrapped on my birthday or Christmas.
But yeah...my mom knows enough about LOTR to know not bet with me. All my friends do the same. They treat me like an expert, while I'm running around looking up answers to their questions on boards like these! SHH!!!
But I do tell them where I get the info from. I won't even pretend to be an expert on LOTR. There's too much to know about it and my poor little human mind can't contain all that glorious information. Not with school going on.
My sister (older by 17 months) would be at the level of seeing on movie and NOT liking it. She didn't hate it, she just didn't understand what was going on. So Mom and I had to explain it to her. Then she seemed to get frustrated that I knew more than she did about LOTR. So I pointed out what she did better than me and that made her feel better. But after that, Mom and I didn't drag her to see any more LOTR movies. It was always just us, then family, then I saw it with friends.
So for sure there are different levels of understanding out there for people about the books and movies. My friends are "experts" on the movie (somehow they count me in there as well.) They view me and my mom as the "book experts". And then they figure everybody else knows a little bit. They've tried to read the books but didn't like it or just didn't finish, while I've been reading them once a year since the 6th grade (sophomore in college now for a time frame). So it does vary for each person. If it didn't, then this would be a very boring world with no room for discussions and debates about Tolkien's world, cause we'd all understand it. And that would be boring, indeed.