by Joshua Carden
September 4, 2001
Like an overwhelming percentage of my previous columns, this column was birthed in an airport. Actually, it was birthed on the way to the airport – Atlanta’s airport, to be exact. I was on my way home from the latest wedding. Experienced readers probably think that the majority of my life revolves around school, weddings, and airports. All I can say is: you experienced readers are pretty perceptive! Anyway, I was in the back of a rental car, which also happened to be carrying fellow Crosswalk humor columnist Sarah Jones, her husband Darren “The Book Beast” Jones, and their three-month-old daughter Adelaide. There is nothing more column-inspiring than traveling with smart people, good writers, and cute babies. If Shakespeare didn’t say that, he should have. Sarah and I were discussing plans for a future joint column (COMING SOON!) and somehow we got to talking about trivia and fun facts, which led to this walk down memory lane…
Growing up, I loved playing trivia games – Bible Trivia, Trivial Pursuit, Computer Jeopardy, you name it. While other kids told knock-knock and elephant jokes, I read Encyclopedia Brown books. I was constantly annoying, er, amazing my friends and family with the weird, the inane, and the irrelevant. Like Sherlock Holmes, who informed Dr. Watson that the Copernican Theory was taking up room in his brain that could have been better used, my head is filled with facts that still crash around in my cerebrum and come out at odd times. It’s really bad. Sometimes, my professor will ask a question in class and some word like “President” will be mentioned, and The Little Trivia Guy living in my brain immediately pops up waving a sign reading “There were 16 Presidents in this country before George Washington.” (Really. Ask George Grant.) Then I have to ask the guy next to me (who tells knock-knock jokes like a normal person) what the professor just said. *sigh* It’s not easy being trivial.
Several years ago, my church used to travel to Falls Creek, Oklahoma for church camp. Now, as experienced readers will remember, most of my church camp experiences occurred after I became a college student (new readers: see article entitled “Friends.”) However, I did attend this church camp twice as a camper with my church. One of the activities at this camp was a Bible Trivia contest. My church LOVED the Bible Trivia team and we had a high school and a junior high team each year. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, I missed being on a team the two years that I went. But I went and attended the matches and attempted to think the answers loudly enough for my church’s team to hear me. They were mostly home schoolers anyway, so I wasn’t too worried about their skills.
I tell you, those churches took these trivia matches SERIOUSLY. As Chuck Swindoll used to say, “there’s nothing worse than a bunch of pious junior high school kids.” He once told of a time where he was about to substitute teach a junior high Sunday school class. He decided to loosen the kids up with a irrelevant question: “What’s brown, has a tail, climbs trees, and stores nuts for the winter?” After a stunned silence, he repeated the question. Finally a small hand went up in the back: “Yes, I see that hand. What’s the answer?” The young boy answered, “Well, it sounds like a squirrel – but I’m going to say Jesus!”
Anyway, there was an intense air of competition (which interestingly smells a little like old sneakers) in the room housing the Bible Trivia tournament at camp. Two teams battling it out for the finals, sweat dripping, brows furrowed, gray matter flexing – with all that effort you would have thought that the prize was a meal at McDonalds instead of the camp cafeteria that night. It was like a chess match; the audience was required to be absolutely silent and any disturbance or attempt to help a team would result in immediate disqualification. You could enter and leave, but only between questions.
I watched a few of the matches with my pastor, and then I was going to leave to watch our softball team play. I waited until after one team had correctly remembered that Mephibosheth (sp?) was the guy that David looked out for as the last of Saul’s relatives, and quietly made my exit. I was sauntering down the road to the softball field when the door to the tournament burst open behind me. My pastor came racing out and threw himself on the ground and rolled about gasping for breath. I hurried back to find out if he was okay. As I approached, I realized he was laughing so hard he was crying! I waited until he recovered enough to tell me what had happened. Apparently, one team had received the question: “Whom did Jesus refer to as ‘that old fox?’” Now, the answer to this question is “Herod.” But I’m sure you Bible scholars out there already knew that. You’re bright folks, after all. The team receiving the question conferred among themselves, but they could not come up with an answer within the time limit. The other team was allowed to steal the question. They began to whisper among themselves and finally the scorekeeper asked “Do you have an answer?” The spokesperson for the group turned and confidently announced “Mary Magdalene!” Needless to say, this was enough to send my pastor racing from the room before an explosion of laughter disturbed the competitors. We laughed about that for the rest of the week.
After The Book Beast, Sarah, Adelaide, and I arrived at the Atlanta airport and went to separate gates, I realized how important it is for a writer to have friends around to jog your memory for stories or plant the germ of a good story in your head. To all my friends and family who have inspired me through the years (whether or not I remembered to give you credit at the time), I salute you! I would not be the warped and twisted writer that I am today without you!
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