A Matter of Trivial Importance

If there’s one thing I know well, it’s Harry Potter. Or so I thought.

You know when you’re at trivia, and you haven’t been particularly valuable to your team, either because you don’t know the answers, or because everyone else knows all the same answers you do? And then comes a category that you feel so certain about. You just know you’re about to earn your keep on the team. For Matt it might be Really Boring Number-Related Things; for Virginia it might be Pretty Handmade Jewelry; for Michael it might be Not Being Awesome. You just know you’re about to dominate.

Then comes the question, and everybody’s looking to you. And you just… don’t… know it. You should know it. It’s in your head somewhere. But a whole song later, it’s time to turn in the answer and you’ve still got nothing.

There aren’t many trivia-related scenarios worse than that. Except maybe this one: getting the right answer, knowing it’s right, but then second-guessing yourself, scratching it out and turning in something that’s completely, utterly wrong.

That’s what’s been happening to me lately. Last week at trivia, we got a Harry Potter question. Great for me, the Harry Potter nerd, right?? Well it should have been. “What is Ginny Weasley’s real first name?” should have been simple. Immediately I grabbed the answer sheet and wrote down “Ginevra.” But then somebody looked at it funny.

“Really? Ginevra?”

Well… maybe not. Maybe I’m thinking of another Harry Potter character. Yeah, that’s it. Maybe one of the professors’ first names is Ginevra. But I know Ginny isn’t short for Ginnifer. Maybe Virginia? Yeah, that sounds right. What was I thinking—Ginevra? Please.

Ginevra Molly Weasley, as it turns out.

Then last night, I went to trivia at the pub where my new roommate works. A Movie Scenes question—an easy category for us, we assumed. But it was about Step Brothers, the Will Ferrell movie, which neither of us had seen, nor had any of her coworkers. “In Step Brothers, they hire a band for a party that will only play cover songs from whose 80’s period?”

The first thing to pop into my head was Billy Joel. Then Elton John, because I associate the two. We ran through several different options before finally deciding to make an uneducated guess and write down Prince. Before turning in the answer, I felt compelled to scratch it out and change it to Billy Joel, but I don’t want to be That Person, even on a guess. So I left it alone.

Of course it was the Piano Man.

On the whole, second-guessing myself has lost me a grand total of five points in four days, so nothing too horrible. But I don’t want to lose any more points. It’s time to start trusting my instincts. It’s time to start going with my initial gut reactions.

Because I was right the first time, dammit.