The Downside to Being Lovable

Yes yes, I’ve had Day 2 half-written for a week, and yet have still not managed to finish it up and post it here. However, I’m going to interrupt my wedding narrative stream and tell you about trivia on Monday. I know I keep telling you about trivia, and most of you probably don’t really care that we won…again.* But that’s not the main gist of the story. The main gist only tangentially involves our win, because we won under…unusual…circumstances.

See, back when we first started playing, before getting into our winning 3-person groove, The Pit had sent an invite to his co-workers to join us. Apparently four of these invitees decided to answer his email two months late, and met us at the pub this week.

I had a couple of problems with this scenario right from the start. First of all, bringing four extra players when your three person team has been dominating the game for weeks…well, it feels a little like cheating. Our major competition is a team of four old people, and I like to beat them fair and square. Second, and I admit that this is my crazy in action, having four extra people required us to move to a bigger table. We always sit at the same corner location, and I felt vaguely uncomfortable at a different table in the middle of the floor. Third, having that many people meant that we had to pass the paper with the questions around, instead of just discussing each point amongst our normal trio. This arrangement left a lot of room for small talk with those not actively answering questions, which brings me right to my fourth issue…having to actually interact with these people.

Go ahead, roll your eyes and call me antisocial…I won’t take offense, since that is basically true. But I would like to point out that I didn’t actively hate all of them. There were two girls and a couple. I had no issues with the girls, who mostly sat at the other end of the table and consulted each other about trivia questions. The couple on the other hand, I grew to loathe more and more as the evening wore on.

The male half was particularly annoying. In what may have been the understatement of the year, The Pit explained it as: “His energy was not your energy.” While I’m sure that this dude was a nice enough guy, he did not stop talking once all night. The talking was combined with rather expansive gestures, which invaded my personal space even though I was sitting all the way across the table from him. It all added up to a very obnoxious package as I tried to concentrate on trivia questions. And predictably, my irritation grew harder and harder to hide as the evening progressed and the man continued draining Bud Light after Bud Light.

While I wasn’t certain that the guy was picking up the negative vibes I was casting his way, I was hoping that at least The Pit was getting the point. I was thus horrified to hear The Pit ask Mr. Obnoxious whether he liked to play board games. Thinking that the next words out of The Pit’s mouth would be an invitation to play at our house, I punched his leg under the table. It was at this point that my beloved, apparently feeling oh so suave and smooth, uttered a very loud “OW!”

I was *this* close to slapping a hand to my forehead and laying my head on the table. However, instead I pretended that nothing weird had just happened, and went back to my internal seething. Blessedly, trivia soon ended, although I did not get much of a reprieve, as The Pit started to chew me out as soon as we were alone in the car. Apparently, he had picked up on my hatred even before I hit him, and was annoyed that I had been so obviously rude to his coworkers.

I argued that A) I was not in fact obviously rude until his ill-timed "OW" gave me away, B) unbearable personalities rarely pick up on subtle hints of hatred anyway, and C) even if Mr. Obnoxious had realized my disdain, it only ensured my vital objective, which was keeping him away from future trivia nights at all costs. For some reason, The Pit was not pleased with my line of reasoning, and went off yesterday morning vowing to do some ‘damage control’ at work.

As it turned out, I was right about B up there, and no damage control was necessary, since the loudmouth had informed people that he loved hanging out with The Pit and I, and planned to invite us to his place soon. Sigh.

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* That makes our record 7 first place, 1 second place, 1 third place prize in 9 weeks of playing. Not that we're counting.