Every year when I return to our family cabin at Kenora, Ontario for the July long weekend, I meet a friend of mine who also has a cabin on the shore of Lake of the Woods and a spirited game of Trivial Pursuit breaks out. Let's call my friend The Smooch, since that is what he was called by some for his ability to curry favour with teachers in high school before he moved away from Winnipeg to the big cities of the south.
The first year that we played Trivial Pursuit we played the Canadian edition and The Smooch's team lost badly. Yes, I mean badly. So badly in fact, that the Duck and I (playing on the same team) won the game, then joined the last place team to overtake The Smooch's team and place second as well. This humiliating loss was not taken well by The Smooch, a friend I had known since we were two years old and swam together in Moms and 2s at the local YMCA, a man able to reconcile any incongruities between the beliefs of John Lennon and a career on wall street in private merchant banking. The Smooch stewed in his loss for a full year.
The next July long weekend, The Smooch came to the cabin armed with a US version of Trivial Pursuit, a version he felt he had an advantage with since for the past 10 years he had lived mostly in the US. On the second night of our trip we laid out the board and played a close game and The Smooch and his wife eventually ended up victorious on the basis of answers to obscure questions based in the minutia of the American pastoral. With The Smooch's dignity restored for another year, this year would prove to be the rubber match.
The Duck and I arrived at The Smooch's family cabin on the second-last night of our visit to Lake of the Woods. Earlier we had been shown the brand new version of Trivial Pursuit that The Smooch had bought just that day at the Canadian Tire store on the Kenora waterfront. The box remained wrapped until we were ready to lay out the board so no one could peek at the cards or replace them with fixed cards from another set. We set up on the table of the screened-in porch as the loons began to call over the lake.
With six of us ready to play, including The Smooch's younger brother and his fiancée, but with no one's enthusiasm too high for a spirited game, we sorted ourselves into two teams and set upon the board. A seesaw battle followed right up until the end when my team (myself, The Smooch's wife, the fiancée) filled our game piece and beat it for the centre of the board. Our die-rolling skills, which had served us so well for the whole game (roll again, roll again, roll again, pie!), suddenly fell apart and we bounced all around the centre hub of the board. Once we landed only one final question would stand between us and a win.
But the hours grew late and the fiancée went to bed. The game ran out of momentum. We're old now, I thought to myself. I may have said it aloud. It proved hard to stay up late after a day in the sun. At one point my partner, The Smooch's wife, posed our opposition their question and in unison they all sat back and began to think/doze. A few minutes later we prompted them for the answer and none of them remembered the question. And just now as I tried to remember the final question, the one we were asked when we finally landed smack dab in the centre of the board and felt the win in our grasp, I needed to consult the Duck to come up with it: Atlanta Braves pitcher Tom Glavine was also drafted by this west coast hockey team.
The Los Angeles Kings.
Posted by James Sherrett at July 14, 2004 08:45 PMHis Nibbs needs his story straightened a bit and embellished.
Trivial Pursuit, year 1: His Nibbs and I are highly competitive, which works out well because so is The Smooch. The victorious question that night for the final win was something like, "who was the Russian ballet superstar who defected to Paris in 1961 and later worked with the National Ballet of Canada." I couldn't think of a more wonderous final question. His Nibbs turned, open jawed, as I sung out "Nureyev!" Rudolf that is.
Trivial Pursuit, year 2: This year the American edition was kept in its shrink-wrap until the game was ready to begin (not in year 3, in which version 6 was already opened). We played 3 times that weekend. His Nibbs and I won once. The other 2 times, even the Americans were reeling at the obscure questions being blasted in our direction.
Trivial Pursuit, year 3: The competitive spirit of the game was driven out by the fact that we were 1) less than enthusiast, 2) couples were separated. I admit my team tried to rely on REM sleep to produce some of the final answers.
Trivial Pursuit, year 4: Re-challenge!
Posted by: The Duck at July 15, 2004 08:38 PM