Hey PJ,
This isn’t a dumb question at all!
Unfortunately, shortcodes do not come included with The Events Calendar at this time. The best solution that we most often recommend for people looking for this functionality is to use an experimental plugin called “Event Rocket”.
Check out Event Rocket here → https://wordpress.org/plugins/event-rocket/
This is a plugin made by one of our own core plugin developers, so it’s very solid and well-made. Read through the information about that plugin, and try it out – it lets you embed events with shortcodes like you mention.
Will this work well for you? Let us know if it helps!
— George