Kim Wetter

Trivia is a Dangerous Game When you Play like This

On Super Bowl Sunday, I turned to the large group of people gathered around and simply asked if anyone would be interested in going to trivia this week. My request was met with a resounding, drunken, “No!”

We used to attend trivia every single Wednesday night at the Ballroom for the better part of a year, so why all the negativity?

It all started out innocent enough – two summers ago, Todd, Aric and Forge found out that the Ballroom had trivia on Wednesdays. They also found out that the Ballroom was magically not douchey on a weekday, pool was free for trivia players and the staff was super cool. They tried inviting people along but it took a while to convince anyone that the Ballroom would be absent of the Axe-sprayed assholes we so carefully try to avoid.

The first night I went, I was pleasantly surprised. The wait staff was awesome and trivia was a delight! The host, G Money, is a gregarious dude with a clever wit. (He’s so cool, in fact, that when I told him I collect Jager gear but was missing a pair of shorts, he bought me a pair of Jager shorts he found at a thrift shop. We’re like BFFLs. And I probably owe a dollar to the douchebag jar for owning a Jager cooler, bucket, several t-shirts, a hat, flip flops, lanyards, and now shorts.) Each week, besides the standard current events and music sections, he picks an obscure category to test our knowledge with. My first week at trivia, the theme was “mustaches.” I think the second week was “equestrian knowledge.”

We started inviting more and more people to come along and things very quickly spiraled out of control.

At the height of our trivia stint, we had roughly 8-10 people showing up each week as the regulars and depending on who we invited, we’d have up to 20 people around our tables.

Trivia may be on a Wednesday but if you get that many people together at a bar, you can expect drinking. Lots of it. Especially because the team who drinks the most gets awarded with an extra point. The point became extremely important to us. It was commonplace to order an entire pitcher of beer per person and stick a straw in it, drinking straight out of the pitcher, which counted as four drinks towards our total count. Not surprisingly, we won almost every week.

Then, one day, the regulars showed up and Aric was already hammered. He had been day drinking and was just tossed. G Money came over and joked that he was the “drunk of the week.” We thought it was hilarious.

As with most things in life, we had had to take it one step further.

We decided to deem a “shitshow of the week” each week. We’d figure out who it was going to be and tell them ahead of time so that they could plan accordingly (professionally, personally, etc). If you were the shitshow of the week, people would buy you shots and you were required to get hammered. We would assign people the week of their birthday or some special occasion so that they felt more comfortable drinking massive amounts on a Wednesday night.

Our team, My Fair Labia, won the drinking competition for every week after that. Unfortunately, we also regularly spent more than $50 each every single Wednesday night. We also regularly hated Thursday mornings.

So, it’s not entirely surprising that my friends and the regulars of My Fair Labia are hesitant to get back into it. Some could say I’m growing up now that we don’t get that drunk every Wednesday night. Or maybe the rest of the world growing up without me and I can’t reasonably go it alone. I’m not sure. I am sure that if I find a couple of people to go with, I will be there tomorrow night, drink in hand, saying hello to my BFFL G-Money and saying goodbye to Wednesday night sobriety.