Not So Trivial--Friday Night Pursuits

Paco and I helped bring home the first place honors at a community-wide trivia contest held to raise money (over $3200!!) to update the community auditorum last night. Our team was sponsored by the middle school and consisted of three other teachers, a teacher's son, and an 8th grader we recruited from the crowd who actually knew the name of the Smurf's cat!!!!--Azrael. We were competing against 9 other teams from the mortuary, hospital, high school, a title company, the radio station--KVSI, and a couple of others. 10 rounds, 100 questions, 1 minute a question. Our strong suits seemed to be Storyland (missed the name of the deer in The Yearling, though: Flag) and Wild Weather, but we surprised ourselves with what we pulled off in Country Music. U.S. geography kicked us around a bit (Which state is bordered on the east and west by a river? Iowa), but we did surprisingly well in Olympics. The good news was that we could collaborate as each question was read before we had to write down an answer, AND we could purchase Mulligans to stick over questions we didn't know. We bought 10. Our team held the lead most of the game, although KVSI edged ahead a point or two which brought out our competitive edge. In the end we won by 7.5 points. It was a congenial (all right, semi) fun evening even when the judges ruled that Ritter would pass for Tex Ritter. I mean, come on... And in case anyone ever asks--Buchanan was the only president who never married. My best moment was attributing George Seurat to one of his paintings, and Paco, of course aced a couple of questions on Teddy Roosevelt for us. Mr. C's childhood in England insured that he knew a "spanner" is, in fact, the "wrench" in Clue. But for the life of me I never knew that the original Trivial Pursuit game was named "Genus". Did you? Bruce, our principal, is in Belize, but he's going to be so so proud.