To balance out my bragging in the post below, I thought I’d share a story about how unbelievably stupid I (as well as several other people I shall not name to protect their pride) felt after bar trivia on Thursday.
The last question was fairly straightforward: There are twelve state capitals that start with the letters d, m, j, and p. Name them all.
We got eleven: Denver, Dover, Des Moines, Madison, Montgomery, Montpelier, Juneau, Jackson, Jefferson City, Pierre, and Providence. We could not, for the life of us figure out the twelfth.
We started verbally going through the capitals in a sort of map of the US: “Washington’s Olympia, so no. Oregon’s Salem, so no. California’s Sacramento, so no.”
Then we hit it: “Arizona’s Phoenix, so no.” We all nodded. Eight of us, over one million dollars worth of education between us. Not one of us listened to that statement and thought, “Wait, Phoenix is not spelled with an F.”
We tried for five more minutes until answer sheets were demanded and then turned it in with the twelfth spot blank. I haven’t felt as dumb as I did when the quizmaster identified Phoenix as our missing answer in a looooooong time.
The hell of it is, we somehow still managed to win the grand prize. We’d been doing well in an extremely tough set of rounds, so getting the eleven answers was enough.
I didn’t think I’d ever be able to describe a bar trivia victory as Pyhrric, but we were so mad at ourselves, I think this qualified.
The fact that we failed in such a doofy fashion STILL bothers me four days later.
i’m glad you’re able to laugh about this…b/c it’s pretty hilarious when you think about it. 🙂
You’re not alone. I still pause for a second and stupidly blink a few times when I see “NYK” in a box score or standings or something. That’d be the New York Knicks. That ‘K’ never hits my brain properly.
the hell of it is, i TOTALLY pictured the word “phoenix” in my head and it STILL didn’t occur to me. Northwestern ought to be ashamed to call us alumni.