Juneau Why We Love Trivia?
“Juneau the capital of Alaska?”
Ah, the favorite question of every precocious nine-year-old. Year after year it changes hands on the playground, trickling to younger students like some ancient riddle or rite of passage. On one level, it’s an exercise in a kind of sphynx-like trickery; if their audience isn’t listening they’ll miss the answer—and the questioner’s cleverness—completely.
I like to view it, though, as the first trivia game. “Juneau!” the other child laughingly responds. You see, a question like this is just as much about recognizing the catch in the question as it is about the pride that comes with knowing the answer. It’s one of our first brushes with the feeling of knowing that you know a fact, even if your peers do not.
And so our minds begin to collect, not just the information we learn in the classroom, but the information we learn from living. In fact, we spend our entire lives learning useful—and useless—tidbits. For instance, I can sit here right now and name all seven of the seven dwarfs: Happy, Sneezy, Dopey, Doc, Grumpy, Sleepy, and Bashful. I know that Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is the longest running play in history, and that the Nile flows north. Admittedly, I know nothing about sports.
Think about what you know. Are you a movie buff? Do you memorize basketball stats? Maybe you’re really into history. Very few things beat the excitement of knowing the answer to an obscure question about one of your interests.
That’s why trivia nights are so much fun. We assemble teams of our friends, give ourselves ridiculous team names, and cheer each other on as we somehow pull the first name of the Seinfeld character Kramer out of the deep recesses of our minds. (It’s Cosmo, by the way.) Win or lose; it doesn’t matter. Just so long as we’re having fun—and giving purpose to those bizarre factoids we accumulate over the years!
On Saturday, April 9, several local teams will give a higher purpose to their love of trivia by competing on the QCT stage as part of a trivia night fundraiser for our theatre. Hosted by Tangerine Bowl trivia guru Ron Kinscherf and featuring ten rounds of general trivia, the evening aims to raise funds to do some much-needed updates to our facility. So no matter who answers the most questions correctly, everyone in the room will win. How? By making sure that their community theatre is a place where theatre can thrive for generations to come.
So here’s a warmup question:
Q: What are your plans for April 9?
A: QCT Trivia Night
Registration is due by the end of day on April 4. Call us at 217-222-3209 or visit the link below for more information.
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ABOUT TRIVIA NIGHT>>
A wonderful group of people have worked very hard to put this night together, and we thank them from the bottom of our hearts.