A friend of mine invited my husband and me to a Geeks Who Drink trivia night last Tuesday.  We’d only played once, back in 2012 in our hometown, with a group of friends and my brother. We won that night, and split our prize with a person playing by herself, Tracey Individual.  While we had a lot of fun with that experience, we hadn’t made it out to another trivia night since.

I’m definitely an introvert/borderline hermit. I love being around my friends and after I am out and socializing, I’m always happy that I’d made the effort.  But the act of GETTING there – leaving the house, mustering my will to be social (especially if I know I have to meet new people) is always a challenge.

But I’ve made an effort at being more social lately.  If my husband ends up getting another job within the next year and we have to move, I don’t want to have any regrets about not cultivating the friendships I have here.  I wasn’t in the best mood on Tuesday – I was angsty and I just wanted to stay home.  But we’d made a commitment to our friend, and decided to go anyway.

Once we started the game, my old competitive spirit took over and I quickly forgot about everything bothering me that day.  I was a Decathlon dork in high school, so these competitions are always a fun callback to those days.  If I’m on your trivia team, I can offer the following skills:

• Pop culture, particularly –
  • Entertainment gossip – I have more than 20 years worth of filling my brain with celebrity gossip (wow, that’s depressing when I type it out. But I started reading celebrity gossip sites at 14.  THIS IS MY TRUTH)
  • Trash pop songs – You haven’t heard of “Cake by the Ocean” by DNCE?  I HAVE.  I don’t seek out the trash pop songs, they just find me.
• A limited assortment of history trivia, especially if it involves the British royal family.

I do NOT offer any help in the way of:

• Sports – I don’t have any interest in it.
• Geography – I am TERRIBLE at geography and I usually keep my mouth shut at these questions to avoid embarrassing myself.
• Cars – just don’t give an eff.  Don’t ask me about Tesla, I cannot help you.

We ended up placing third, which was great!  This was despite my saying that Michelle Williams was the second most successful Destiny’s Child member, completely forgetting that Kelly Rowland exists, so I lost my team two points.  The quizmaster thought I was talking about Dawson’s Creek Michelle Williams.  NO. THERE IS A MICHELLE WILLIAMS IN DESTINY’S CHILD.  LOOK IT UP.

GOD.

We had such a good time, that I think we’ll go again here very soon!  Hanging out with friends, playing trivia, and having the opportunity to be more social – win/win/win.