Sock Monkeys For The Win!

“Pittsburgh has over 400 of these…” the moderator said and we all looked at each other with blank stares. “Hills?” someone across the table asked the group. “No, I think bridges” Chick said. We all discussed the possibilities between bites of dinner, and decided on hills. Once the answer was handed in and the guesses scrutinized, the questions in that round were recapped and the correct answers were revealed. “Question number 4, the answer is bridges.” “See, you should have listened to me! I lived in Pittsburgh for a few months years ago” Chick said.  “You should have said so.” someone retorted. The scores were updated, “…and the Sock Monkeys in the lead with 240 points!” Everyone at our table erupted in applause, along with others at surrounding tables who were competing in the trivia game. Our usual trivia place was full up, so we traveled across town to give somewhere else a try. And we were rockin’ it!

It wasn’t my first trivia rodeo. I watched the Superstore episode last week where America Ferrera’s character just wanted to go to trivia with her co-workers and dropped several not so subtle hints about her vast knowledge of all things trivial to be part of that in crowd. It made me smile about the first time I went to trivia with my work friends in Armory Square in the early 2000s. Every week my fellow booksellers and I would head to the bar and order our pints and cheese plates (nothing fancy, just saltines with squares of cheddar cheese and onions and mustard). These craft pints were the first time I had ever ventured away from the safe bottles of Blue I usually enjoyed. The trivia questions were challenging and the conversation engaging, and I looked forward to it every week. We were pretty full of ourselves, thinking that because we were well educated adults who worked in a bookstore, that we would crush it every week. Well, not so much.

And now a chance to redeem myself, that week called The Sock Monkeys. How did we come up with that? I was showing Bryan and Chris my new pop socket, and Bryan didn’t quite get it. “What did you call it? A pop tart? A sock monkey?” and I told him Diego gave it to me to help me hold my phone with one hand to take selfies.  An hour later I was pressed to come up with a name for our team and it jumped out at me. It was a lucky one; we won the whole shebang that night. And here I am with a new improved selfie angle thanks to my pop socket!