Thevictorians Don Their Smarty Pants for Charity

Last night three Thevictorians hit the town to compete in a trivia event for charity. Val alone had planned to attend, but was joined by Hick, who invited himself at 5:57 a.m. while Val was still groggy from her recliner nap. Genius made a surprise trip home from the halls of higher learning, and was spirited away before he knew what hit him.

The return of Genius was known to Val since Monday night. She was under strict orders to be a lady, and reveal nothing. You can imagine how difficult that was for Val. The departure time for trivia was 6:00, and Genius's arrival was projected to be 5:30. Hick had just settled himself into his La-Z-Boy with a snack of a 3-day-old Arby's Jr. Val sat at her laptop in the front living room window, trying to will recalcitrant internet fumes through the glass and into her Shiba like enticing a genie back into his bottle. Hick sat up suddenly, slamming the footrest back into that La-Z-Boy. "Here comes Genius up the driveway!"

You could hear it in his voice, in only those six words. Why, WHY did I invite myself to trivia! My son is home! MY SON IS HOME! I want to spend time with my son. Who is home. Right now!

"You don't have to go to trivia. I'd planned on going by myself. It's all right if you want to stay home."

We waited. Genius had a mini-lovefest with the hounds on the front sidewalk. He made a grand entrance. Or he would have. But Hick had locked the front door when he came in from the goat yard. "You've locked him out, you know." Genius has a key. But it did seem rather rude for him to be locked out of his home while we sat on the other side of the door. Hick ran to let him in.

"You're home!"

"Uh huh."

"I guess everyone knew but me?"

"Uh huh."

Genius had no plans for the evening except sleep or film developing. I invited him to trivia. "It's at school. Maybe you can help with the scoring. Or you can visit. Or somebody might need you on a team. Ours is full already." The more he heard who was going to be there, the more Genius leaned toward spending time with his uncool mom and pop, at a trivia competition. We threw him into the back seat of T-Hoe, the one usually occupied by The Pony, who was spending the night at Grandma's.

It's a good thing The Pony did not tag along, I suppose. We dropped about sixty dollars into the coffers, what with entry fees, mulligans, foot-long hot dogs, and raffle chances on a sports car. The foot-longs were probably unnecessary, what with our table full of popcorn and pretzels provided by the trivia-runners, and mini candy bars, store-bought Chex Mix, M&Ms, and sweet potato chips brought by participants. Still, who's gonna turn down a foot-long hot dog for a dollar?

I paid for Genius, just in case he ended up on a team. He made the rounds, and was snapped up by one with a college buddy/high school friend due to graduate in December, along with several elementary teachers and a couple of kids. Of course they beat us. But we DID take second, after a tie-breaker. It was not a competition that favored our team of three science teachers, a computer geek, a music teacher, a business teacher, two church ladies, and Hick. Who throws a trivia competition without a science category? Not to mention includes categories in U.S. history, Missouri history, U.S. travel destinations, and sports? I'll tell you who! NOT science teachers. Those elementary teachers really know their history. But I'm willing to bet they couldn't diffuse their way out of a phospholipid bilayer bag.

The high point, or probably the low point if you took a survey of competitors last evening, was when our team debated the multiple choice question concerning origin of the Special Olympics Law Enforcement Torch Run. We had narrowed our choices down to Wichita and Chicago, with the majority going for Chicago, since they seem to have a history of supporting police and firemen. Just after turning in our answer sheet, the computer dude married to the science gal sitting across the table from me said to us, "Oh, sure, Chicago. I suppose they were also commemorating the great fire at the same time." His dry wit tickled my funny bone. We started to giggle.

"Maybe that first time, they were riding cows through the streets, holding their torches, in a true shout-out to that historical fire." We couldn't stop laughing. More than a few contestants stared at us like we were poking prancing unicorns with pointy sticks. Shame on us.

I suppose it was Karma holding hands with Even Steven, skipping down the path to comeuppance, who caused that science gal to protest after the grading of the last round, that what we had marked as an Xbox logo was deemed to be the Xerox logo. Thus causing the committee to re-evaluate our answer sheet, and discredit that answer they had skimmed over and counted right. Which dropped us into a tie for second.

Thank goodness we had estimated our score at only two points more than our final total. To the tie-breakers go the second-place spoils.