Trivial Tangents

Iwanski and I have a weekday routine.

Every day after work, we eat dinner while watching an episode of Judge Judy. (It’s very important to watch Judge Judy every day. It’s very stress-relieving and entertaining to see people being held accountable for their stupid-ass actions.)

Then, after we eat, we sit down on the couch and watch Jeopardy together. I call it “playing” Jeopardy, because I always try to see if I can answer more questions than Iwanski.

Of course, that’s really a foolish feat, since no one I know has half the random facts stored in their brain that Iwanski does. I’m telling you, this man can name actors in obscure movies that he’s never even seen before. He just remembers EVERYTHING.

Then there’s me. I remember some things really well—my best topics are health (hey, they don’t call me Miss Healthypants for nothin’!), science, and music (sometimes—unless you have to name a famous singer. I’m terrible with names). But ask me to remember a President’s name or the date that a war started or—God forbid—something about British history or the Royal Family, and I’m completely lost. When we get those categories in jeopardy, I just sort-of sit there, staring off into space, absent-mindedly petting the cat who has settled onto my lap. (Autumn loves those categories, as she knows she’ll get a really good belly rub as Iwanski rattles off the names of Senators from the 1950’s.)

It’s similar to the experiences I’ve had playing Trivial Pursuit with Iwanski. At least with Trivial Pursuit, you can keep somewhat entertained and involved in the game by having to read the questions to the other person. And believe me, I’ve had a lot of experience in reading Trivial Pursuit questions to him.

But one of the best games of Trivial Pursuit I’ve ever played was with Iwanski and our good friend Jonathan. We decided we were going to play it as “Tangent Trivial Pursuit.” What that meant was that even if you got a question wrong, you still could earn a piece of Trivia pie by going off on a tangent and telling an interesting and/or funny and/or entertaining story related to the topic of the question. For example, if the question was about dinosaurs, I could tell the story about how all of the women in my family do “tyrannosaurus arms.”

Or if it was about cooking, then Jonathan could tell about the fabulous “ingredient party” he participated in recently.

Of course, along the way as we played the game, we made up more rules. For example, if someone told an incredibly lame story or re-told the same story again, then we could “de-pie” them. But conversely, if someone told an extremely touching or emotional story, they could be “double-pied.”

And of course, if someone told a really bad story and was trying desperately to get a piece of pie, even though he/she was told repeatedly to “give it up,” we would refer to them as a big ole’ pie whore!

It was a really fun (and funny) way to play Trivia, and it actually gave Jonathan and I a chance to beat Iwanski.

But of course, Iwanski still beat us.

But it was fun. Really fun.

And after all, isn’t that really the point of life?