These are all "weird flex" tales- moments of pride or an oddly presented compliment that were in anomalous situations, or unlikely manners.
All three happened after I had moved into my condo and was still young, but established at work.
The title comes from Anabelle referring to anything from my past she hasn't heard about as "Dad Lore."
Here's the third
This tale happened in a dating period after the earlier "waterskiing" analogous relationship. (See the first Dad Lore.)
The connection during this event was much more my "goldfish in the closet" analogous relationship.
(See Greg Behrendt's Comedy Central stand-up special.)
My girlfriend had a co-worker she was friends with.
I had met that co-worker previously on several occasions.
The co-worker regularly mentioned how good her girlfriend was at the "You Don't Know Jack" computer trivia game.
Like, extremely regularly...
I'm a pretty weird guy and I found it unusual how frequently it came up in conversation the few times we'd met, and also in conversations I wasn't there for that I'd hear about second hand..
My girlfriend would occasionally reply that I was really good at trivia games in general, and her friend would bring up that I should play against her girlfriend in the alarmingly regular mentions of the "Jack" game.
Nothing came of it, because even back then I had better things to do with my life.
One weekend the co-worker and her girlfriend were looking for help to move.
This was before an Up the Lake friend who I consider family who shall not be named had taught me the ground rules for helping someone move at the age and situation we were both in at the time:
Unless
A) They are family.
B) They are friends you consider family.
C) You will get laid.
NEVER HELP SOMEONE MOVE!
Without this important knowledge and with none of those options on the table, we, and a smallish boatload of other friends, helped unload a rent-a-truck into the house.
I hauled in a fair amount of the large items. (See the second Dad Lore.)
It went smoothly, easily and without injury or incident...
With the exception of the coworker's girlfriend saying she had heard I was good at trivia, implying that we should play "You Don't Know Jack" that day and regularly hitting me with trash talk and apologies for the massive loss I was going to suffer,
All while I carried her stuff into her new home.
Me? I didn't trash talk.
I didn't set expectations.
I didn't anticipate skill levels for a computer game I'd never seen before.
However, as my sister points out, I did and do have a "s***-bucket for a head."
Additionally, when younger I could easily access the contents of that bucket at extremely high speeds as well as notice unusual connections between sections of the bucket's contents at an equally impressive rate.
All the moving was done, everyone else had left, and we chatted cordially a bit about the four of us possibly having take-out or restaurant dinner later.
Then the two of us destined to compete sat down at whatever Nineties era PC she had. She booted up the computer and loaded the game, apologizing to me again for how skilled she was. We entered our names and the contest began, with the other two watching and chatting nearby.
"You Don't Know Jack" was set up like a game show. I think it really was one on TV at some point. Whether it was before, after or during the time we played this computer version, I'm not sure. I hadn't seen it- making the videos, flashy animations, and goofy "trick question" ways of presenting the queries in some categories new to me.
As predicted, it was no competition at all.
As not predicted, the owner of the game was not the one receiving no competition.
True, I hadn't seen it before. However, at the end of the day, it was a trivia game built on basic general knowledge questions that awarded greater points for faster answers.
Pulling random facts, quotes, lyrics and odd cross references out of the old bucket with minor provocation is what I do.
Ask anyone who has had a conversation with me for more than five minutes.
(And at that age, I did it in far more detail and quicker than I am able to now.)
In short:
I destroyed her.
There was no moment where the outcome was in doubt.
My score leapt way ahead of hers almost immediately and stayed there.
The gap increased the entire time we played.
As it progressed, her expression became visibly angrier.
The game finished, and the final (extremely disparate) scores were posted on screen.
She quietly turned off the computer...
Stood up...
And threw me out.
No "good game."
No "well I guess I wasn't as good as I've been bragging about all this time."
No manners of any kind.
Nope.
Nothing.
Just, "Good bye" as she sternly walked us to the door.
Ole'!
2 comments:
So I was a huge fan of this game at a distinct point in time, so I was particularly interested in how this story played out. Well done Jeff!!
Thanx a bunch. I'm learning this game had a pretty big following at the time.
Who knew?
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