Oh, I Totally Know This!

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So I went down to Lansdowne Park for World Trivia Night to play with Lynn from Turtlehead (http://diaryofaturtlehead.wordpress.com/ -- I wanted to link to it. I tried to link to it. I thought I knew how to link to it. The HTML error message says 'labels cannot enclose labels'. Come on HTML, I said. 'Can't?'. That's such a negative word. Where would we be if the Wright Brothers believed everyone who told them humans CAN'T fly? I say labels CAN enclose labels! Who's with me?! Turns out HTML is an inflexible bitch.) even though we'd never met and the only picture I've seen of her is blurry and half cut-off and I didn't know any of the other eight people on the team or any of the other thousand people that were going to be there and I'm so shy and socially awkward that just going to the post office makes me break out in hives some days. But hell, it was something fun to do on a Friday night, I'm trying to grow and experience new challenges, and I was told there would be Pringles.
I think I acquitted myself admirably. In the candy-eating department, anyway. Apparently World Trivia can only be answered while ingesting copious amounts of sugar and enough salt to burn an actual hole through your tongue. The best quote of the evening, in my opinion, didn't even involve trivia: it was when the guy across the table from me moaned "I wish I was bulimic".

My great shame of the evening was the one question I could have answered but didn't. It was about an Alberta Farm Girl who became Canada's first female chief justice. I didn't know it, but the name 'Beverly McLachlin' kept hovering in my mind. The problem is that whenever I blurt something like this out, someone generally says 'um, we're looking for female chief justices, and that's a grunge metal rocker dude who performs in drag'. And I was at a table of really smart people. So I didn't say it. And it was the answer. And I think it would have given us another ten out of ten. (sorry, Lynn)

The one answer that I did know that everyone else didn't was almost as embarrassing, because I had to close my eyes, do a Winnie-the-Pooh 'think think think' routine, stand on my head and count backwards from fifty before I remembered. One guy was looking at me like 'cripes, if it's actually going to make brain matter leak out your ears, never mind then'. (it was Lars Von Trier).

Whatever. The fact is, just getting down there and walking in the door and not bolting back to my car and driving to McDonald's was a huge personal triumph. And the fact that the first category being 'War' and the second category being 'P's' and this not causing anyone to take out a shotgun and start blasting away was just a bonus.

Awesome night, Lynn. Thanks.