Last night was the exhibition tournament for our student quizbowl team. This meant that the champion teams played each other, and then the all-star players competed for fun against a makeshift faculty/staff team. I was on this faculty/staff team, for the second year in a row. Last year, we named ourselves the Sacrificial Lambs, and I distinctly remember not answering a single question all evening or even feeling like I could have attempted an answer. This year we were The Placeholders.

Introducing us, the all-star team coach explained that while historically the faculty/staff team has done alright in the challenge, it has been unable to beat the students for the last 4 years… and that in terms of score, “the last two years were not close.” He did concede that last year we were playing against the team that later went on to win the national championship, so we couldn’t really have been expected to win.

Well, last night I contributed a few answers, which was good… but I was reminded that answering trivia questions is not a talent I posses. I buzzed in precisely two times. The first time, I was beaten to the punch by one of my own team members who hit his buzzer a fraction of a second before I did. Luckily he knew the correct answer, so the point was ours anyway. The second time I buzzed in only to be told that I couldn’t answer because one of my teammates had already locked our team out by answering incorrectly. I hadn’t realized we weren’t allowed to try again… Oh well.

But I redeemed myself by easily answering a whole string of bonus questions. Here’s how it works: if a team member answers a question, then the team is given 30 points worth of bonus questions that all relate to a single topic. Well, just when I had resigned myself to being the useless member of my team yet again, we got a bonus set that asked us to listen to three descriptions of dance moves and produce the French ballet terms that named those movements. Nobody else had a clue, but I could name them without even thinking. I mean… Plie, jete, and arabesque? How much more basic could you get, right? Yippee! 30 points, all mine.

Now, if I just knew ancient Asian kings, scientific and mathematical formulae, pop culture, art history, anatomy, 16th century poets, philosophy, and Supreme Court history… Oh, and if I could release that knowledge from my brain to my tongue…

This afternoon after work I went to the grocery store only to find it and all surrounding buildings eerily dark. Then I remembered the lights at work flickering about half an hour earlier and realized that while my lights had complained, the lights in half the town had simply given up and gone out.

I got out of the car and approached the grocery store employee who was standing in the doorway thinking that she could at least answer my question (“I bought this chicken here and it tasted awful. Can I return the rest of the it and get my money back?”) even if she couldn’t do anything about it until the power came back.

“The power’s out,” she mentioned, helpfully, as I walked up.

“I see that.” I still didn’t feel close enough to actually ask a question so I continued forward.

“I can’t let anyone in,” she warned, stepping protectively into the doorway and spreading herself slightly so as to fill as much of the gap as possible.

“I understand that, but I was wondering…”

“You can’t come in.”

“Right. I just have a question.”

Just then another worker came out, possibly to help fend off this problem customer. Recognizing her as one of the managers, I asked her my question, but she only answered that I’d have to contact the Deli, which is “all the way back in the corner of the store, that way…. but you can’t go in there.”

Right… Sorry I asked….. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.