Last year, after nearly two decades of success in local and national bar / tavern trivia championships, I put down my pencil and walked away from the competitive bar trivia scene. I felt that I had achieved all I wanted, and in my mind there was no need to continue on. So at last year’s Summer Bowl, I called it quits.
Yesterday, I returned.
See, I kinda found a loophole that lets me participate in bar trivia again.
And it’s all thanks to my friend Ed.
Ed hosts one of the bar trivia games, he’s the compere Thursday nights at the Warbler Brewery in Delmar. There’s a few weeks this summer where he won’t be at his normal game, and he asked if I would be interested in covering for him.
You know what? I gotta give this a try. I’ve answered the questions for so many years … how would I do in ASKING the questions?
Let’s try this.
To say I was nervous for hosting my first trivia gig is like saying water is wet. The last thing I wanted was for my first hosting appearance to collapse in a morass of mistakes and a battering of boos.
Thankfully, everyone at the Warbler – from the staff to the trivia teams – were rather chill.
Me? I had butterflies the size of F-14 Tomcats. I went through each question, waited for the teams to submit their answers electronically through their cell phones, then tallied up all the correct answers, submitted the results to the scoring computer, and all seemed to go well.
That is … until I accidentally switched one of the rounds.
However … quick-thinking Chuck simply told the crowd that the music round (guess the song from an audio clip) would start one round early, and everyone seemed okay with it. And after the Warbler staff cranked up the television speakers so that everyone could HEAR the sound clips … we were back on schedule. Whew.
Ed arrived at the Warbler about halfway through my hosting duties, which for me was a big relief. I was doing okay, but I still had a ton of questions about what I was doing and how to do it. Again, Ed was very helpful and things went well. And in the end, I finished my first hosting duties and all the teams were happy. Especially the trivia team known as Maccu Pikachu, who took home the $25 Warbler gift card for the high score at the end of the night.
Okay. Those F-14 Tomcats in my stomach are now down to the size of normal nervous butterflies. I finished my first trivia hosting experience. The world is still spinning. I made it through. And this now means that, as I become more comfortable with hosting a Trivia Nights Live trivia game, I can help out other teams as a substitute host.
So technically … I’m not violating my trivia retirement.
Technically.
But I will say this. I did okay for my first time as a trivia host. Maybe a B+ if I’m scoring at home.
And I’m totally, totally fine with that.
Chuck The Writer 
Nice post
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I guess this makes you Ken Jennings
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