Shameless

O.K., I admit it. I shamelessly recruited some of the brightest minds I know to compete on The Monticello News trivia night team, the Newshounds.

And it worked, we won!

Really, now, it’s not like I cheated. Every team wanted to win. There were some highly competitive people involved, and I was not the only one recruiting over the weeks ahead.

I have a good core team—my daughter, Hannah, an actual employee; a contributing writer for the paper, John Jensen and his wife, Kristina Sorenson. But the rules said we could have five.

I figured if I really wanted to excel I should find someone a bit younger than the aforementioned crowd, and someone older. I qualify as the older, but I’m not really good at trivia. I mean, I think I’m as smart as the next person, but my brain just doesn’t conjure up little details very fast. (I’m the oldest, so my memory is probably pretty close to full, taking longer to access the data.) That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Of course, I watch Jeopardy every chance I get, and I don’t do too shabby most of the time. It just depends on the categories.

So, since I know I’m not very good, I thought about bringing in some better talent to satisfy the “older” requirement. But, I didn’t. It was o.k., the younger people knew almost everything.

But, we are allowed five team members and that’s only four. So who shall be fifth? Well it turns out an old classmate of Hannah’s (within a year or so) is not only very bright, but good at trivia too.

We had encountered him before when we went to trivia in other places, and he came highly recommended. So, Daniel Monroe graciously joined our team, rounding out the five allowed.

After we won, someone had the nerve to say they had not seen any of our team members in Jasper County before. Sore losers. We all live here.

And, just for the record, not only is trivia night a lot of fun, the real purpose is to raise money for the academic teams at the high school. It also serves to show the students that adults in the community can have fun, and are also reasonably bright.

But, back to my recruiting. Just for the record, Trevor Wilson was not available. No, I didn’t call him, but I thought about it. He has played previously with the Workman crew, as have his mother and stepdad. But, alas, they, too were out of town. Sorry, Stone.

And, I don’t think Betty Jean Jordan or Dr. Shannon Barton competed this year. They and their teams in the past have been pretty good. Dr. Barton got that anatomy thing down quick.

I could go on, but suffice it to say, if you haven’t taken part in this before, you might want to next year. The News-hounds won the Songbird award last year and the trivia trophy this year. Start working on your team now to take us on next year.

And there’s no need to be afraid. After all, that news crew beat out a lot of really smart competitors. There’s no shame…it’s just good clean, wholesome fun.