TRIVIA

Truth be told I use to hate trivia, possible because I always felt inferior in my knowledge given all the Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit nerds out there. I’m not quite sure why but over the last few years it’s grown on me. It’s kind of a fun and different thing to do. Similar to liking and disliking trivia at the same time, it’s also sort of social and not at the same time. You can barely have a fluent conversation with someone when being interrupted by some loud voice from a microphone firing away at the next question every minute, but I guess that’s sort of the point. It’s even stranger doing trivia in East Africa where it seems to be more of a new thing (brought from the Expat community) and knowledge gaps can be huge.

Speaking of knowledge gaps (and insecurities), the one thing everybody fears deep down inside is not knowing something very obvious that you really should know and it would be embarrassing not to know. For example, I played trivia the other night and was the only American in my group and the question was asked: “Which bill is Abraham Lincoln’s face on?” and everyone turned to me. I thought it was the $1 (confused the damn penny!) and fast forward, our team came in second, and guess what? We lost by one question, so of course everyone was not so happy with me. I admit, dealing with my own currency for so long I should have known and I did feel a little bad. But we did still get a prize, a huge bottle of Waragi, which is the local infamous gin here. This for some people is as much a prize as a penalty depending on your feeling on the super strong and not-so-pleasant tasting hard liquor. Luckily we got to wash it down with some Miranda green apple – the sweetest and most fake and disgusting local soda (yes it tastes like you are drinking super bubble-e chemicals).

This story reminds me of the time I was on a date back in JP, at a place happened to be also having trivia. I had big curly jewfro hair at the time and clearly looked Jewish (my date was not). During the trivia they asked: “On Passover how many cups of wine are traditionally drunk?” And I could have sworn that not just my date, but the whole room turned, staring collectively, to look at me for this answer. Now, like the Lincoln bill question, this is something I obviously really should know – but when you are put on the spot like this with lots of pressure (or not really but we feel like there is) it can be hard to think clearly. I guessed four and happened to be right that time. At least that wasn’t the reason that relationship didn’t work out.