6 is a Perfect Number

Every Sunday night, Starface, a local bar frequently patronized by foreigners, holds a trivia night. You pay a buck to get in (well, 1000 won; I'm not sure that they'd take an American dollar even if you had it) and play on a team, attempting to answer assorted trivia questions from five different categories. I had never actually gone before, though I'd been intending to do so since returning to Korea. When I found out that my friend Marty would be hosting, however, I knew this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

I've always considered myself to be of somewhat above-average intelligence. Not brilliant or anything, just well-educated and rather smart. Foolishly I assumed that the trivia would be fun and challenging for me. In actuality, it was both fun and challenging, but in the sort way if you tried to swim from Korea to Japan while holding your luggage above your head. I was doomed from the start.

After the first several questions, all in the category rather misleadingly entitled "General Knowledge," which included, "What was the name of the ship that carried Charles Darwin and his compatriots to the Galapagos Islands?" "Who was the first man ('or woman,' the ever-egalitarian Marty added) to orbit the earth?" and "What are the largest and smallest countries (by population) playing in the 2006 World Cup?" I knew I was doomed. I could feel my assurance and confidence melting away and evaporating quickly into the air heated by the vast knowledge of absolutely everyone else in the room. Have I dumbed down that much in the several years since I've left school? Did I ever even learn that information? What useless facts did my school teach when I could have been learning about Ricky Martin's band, Menundo?

So rather than being of any use whatsoever to my team, I instead sat there trying very hard to look smart and knowledgeable. I furrowed my brow. I pretended to write. I gave small cries of excitement at various junctures, hoping to indicate my familiarity with the subject matter. But I was truly useless. Ironically, I was able to provide a few answers on our second round: math and science, the two subjects which most under-stimulated me in school. I learned some new tidbits, too. For example, a "perfect number" is an integer which is the sum of its proper divisors. 6 is a perfect number. So is 28. And yes, you're right, so is 8,589,869,056. Duh.

The greatest contribution I gave, the pinnacle of my achievement, came when the question, "How do you spell 'onomatopoeia?'" was asked. It's a give-away that I know it, as you just read it, but I nearly shouted and stood up when Marty asked the question. I've recently referred to it in a post, if you'll remember. In fact, Val, Marty's girlfriend and also my good friend, later told me that she thought of me when they wrote that question. She taught Grace after I did and said that Grace still runs around the school asking people if they know what onomatopoeia is. So my usefulness factor raised one bar.

Sadly, it was quickly dashed again when they asked a sociology question. Supposedly this is encompassed in my expertise, as I have a Bachelors of Social Work that I paid way too much money for. "Who was the father of social conflict theory?" Social conflict theory. Social conflict theory. It echoed across the cacophony of my mind. Meanwhile, my brain was skipping happily, surreptitiously plucking flowers from a vacant field. The answer that cleverly eluded me was, of course, Karl Marx. This compounds the fact of my mental vacuity, as I've spent some time visiting and studying in formerly communist countries. Social conflict theory.

The third round was language and literature, which also somewhat raised my hope. But alas, let's just say that Val and Marty are both undeniably smarter than me. I needs to read more bookseses (ugg, though I shuddered when I reread that sentence again. I knows how to write, I does). And I almost just walked away when we came to the music round. It was like that old game show "Name That Tune," where you had to identify a song within the first several seconds of it playing. Strangely enough, they didn't pick the groups "Bread" or "DC Talk," both of which may have provided me some sort of chance. Can't figure out why they were excluded. The girls in our group, Liz, Ang, and me, did know "Fur Elise" by Beethoven. We are too cool. Thank goodness for Kevin, who proved to be our salvation for the night. He kept grabbing the paper from us to actually write more than "I don't know" or "We suck."

All in all, though, it was really fun. We lost, though not spectacularly. Second-to-last place got a can of tuna as a prize, but sadly we eked them out to get third-to-last, I believe. We'll try less next time.

I now know that the trivia answers are, at least for the time, ingrained into my mind. It's just too bad that they change the questions for every trivia night. Otherwise I think I could have done quite well the next time.

Here's to stupidity.
Love Aub

P.S. I actually now feel the need for a disclaimer, as it appears that some people are at times taking me far too seriously. Regarding my end of the world post, I received a number of comments assuring me that I'm not fat. Honestly, I have no qualms with my body or fears of that; I thought it was a funny story. And I really like to exaggerate what occurs in my mind. That's all. So if you walk away thinking that I'm sporadically hitting my forehead so as to punish my stupidity, staying up late at night to pour over new information about the phylum Chordata and the subfamily Atelinae, or possessed with a consuming need to learn Greek so as to retranslate the New Testament, then you're wrong. That's all.