The tragedy of stolen victory

We almost won quiz night at Finn McCool’s last night, and we thought the night was ours. Our supposed victory was especially sweet because of our theme — Peter suggested we all dress as nerds and name our team “Virgins for life.” Alice put her hair in pigtails and wore a tie and glasses, and I wore a dorky polo with Alice’s other tie, and also carried a secret weapon: my laboratory goggles from freshman year chemistry which I still own for some reason. Quiz Night Guy walks around during the quiz and reads each team’s name on the mic, and it’s customary to target one’s team name at another team with which one has a rivalry. Last night, in response to our nerd panache, one team named themselves “team get down, virgins, and start slutting out” (or something to that effect). From that moment on, we knew we had to wow the crowd of would-be detractors with a stunning victory, and for a while it seemed we had done just that. We bombed the obligatory state motto category, but cleaned up on Canada, rocket science, directors, and the name-the-song category. When we got our score card back from the team correcting it, it said 31, and the highest other score was 29. Of course we exchanged high-fives while yelling “Virgins for life!” and began making plans to buy a round of Jaegermeister shots (first place is $25 off your tab), but then Quiz Guy examined our card and pointed out that the correcting team couldn’t perform simple addition. Our actual score was 27. Our spirits fell.

Do not despair. The Virgins for Life will be back next week, and next week we will claim victory as surely as Malcolm Reynolds would beat Han Solo in a one-on-one fight.