When quiz nights turn sour…

Bullies come in all shapes and sizes and this woman clearly thought she could bully me. Maybe she was threatened by my youth or jealous over the fun we were having, whatever her reasons, it didn’t get her anywhere. It just made her look ugly, frustrated and vile. 

Competitiveness is not necessarily a bad personality trait. My competitive streak has often to lead to good things.

The desire to be top has transposed itself on to many aspects of my life. It is the reason that I work in sales and is definitely the reason I went back to university as a mature student.

Being a competitive person means that my ears prick up at the slightest mention of the words ‘quiz night’. 

I’m not the brain of Britain and my general knowledge is severely let down by my lack of interest in most mainstream sports but I do read newspapers daily and am quite good with other subjects like geography, food, word meanings and music.

Last week while staying with my Dad, I went to the local pubs weekly quiz night. As the pub is in the darkest depths of Cornwall, mobile phone signal is non-existent - making cheating impossible and the quiz night more interesting.

The quiz was going well and our team ‘I’m not a gynaecologist…’ had swapped papers with another team to mark. On marking their answers it was clear to see that we were competing against a professional pub quiz team.

Not only were the answers nearly all correct, they were written clearly and neatly. Unlike our scrawled and doodled-on scrap of paper, there were no crossings out.

As the night rolled on, pleasantries were swapped with the team and it seemed everyone was having fun. One member of our team kept saying the answers loudly and I’m sure that a few members from their team had a sneaky peak at our answers when they were conveniently ordering their drinks next to where we were sat at the bar. We had no chance of winning but we played along anyway.

On marking the music round, one of the answers the other team had given was ‘My Town’. The actual answer was ‘White Town’ so I marked it wrong.

That turned out to be a big mistake.

When they collected their results, one of their players saw the cross and was not happy with it. The woman, who throughout the night had been pleasant and smiling, turned into an ugly character. Probably in her fifties, she looked nicely dressed and well presented, so the telling-off I received was rather unexpected.

She snatched our paper back and took a point off of our team for answering ‘Gonna Get Us’ when the song title was ‘Not Gonna Get Us’. We had already got most answers wrong so the impact to our score was minimal but the way she berated me at the bar and quibbled over a point has shown me that competitiveness can be a bad personality trait if taken to the extreme.  

Needless to say we didn’t win the quiz. I rather lost interest in it after she had made me feel so uncomfortable.

Surprisingly, they didn’t win the quiz either so that was at least some consolation. Perhaps they lost because I marked that answer wrong. But you know what? If I had to do it again, I would mark that answer wrong every time.

KIMBERLEY BARBER