Trivial Pursuit
Unfold the board and lay out the pieces, it is family game night. Tonight, Trivial Pursuit.
My family’s worn game of Trivial Pursuit is played almost every Friday and Saturday night. With the blue wedge in front of me, I prepare to dominate using every hint I can get, often in the form of terrible puns, to answer the questions. Each category reflecting a key part of my personality.
Blue. Geography. In the tenth grade, I engaged in an outdoor education program that allowed students to plan and lead trips all over my home province of Beautiful British Columbia. I informed others on the amazing ecology surrounding us, led others through bonding exercises and taught myself how to make a killer homemade-wilderness-mac-and-cheese sauce. I also learned patience when I spilt the boiled macaroni noodles on the forest floor.
Brown. Literature. J.K. Rowling once said that in dreams we enter a world that is entirely our own, but my favorite thing about reading is the invitation to step into a world constructed by an entirely different mind. Whether it is looking through the eyes of an Unbroken American World War II prisoner of war or the eyes of a young Suli ‘Wraith’ from The Barrel, I always find a way to be truly mesmerized by the words of others. I have also learned, like Lemony Snicket before me, to never to trust someone who has not brought a book with them.
Pink. Entertainment. I have spent an immeasurable amount of time honing my skills as an absolute comic nerd. With a passion for the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and the Dark Knight, I have amassed a peculiar knowledge that, however potentially useless, taught me many life lessons. Starting in the Great Depression with Superman, comics mirror our society. Stan Lee, the son of Jewish immigrants, showed me that thriving as an outsider, or X-man, can be a superpower in it of itself.
Yellow. History. I have triple citizenship in the UK, US, and Canada. My family, not originally from Canada, is an interesting tapestry of the different English dialects. This comes out most prominently at family dinners. To my family, the pronunciation of ‘herb’ is anything but trivial. Is color spelled with a ‘u’ or not? I don’t know sometimes. We eat at a British pub, frequently for Trivia Tuesdays. Here my family combines their diverse knowledge to answer questions about what flag is not square (Nepal) and when Bruce Springsteen sang Born in the U.S.A. (1984).
Orange. Sports. When asked why I joined the rowing team, I replied that it was a good way to make friends. Tearing my ACL stopped me from playing sports for my junior year. But that was not the end of my season; I took on new roles. I began scorekeeping tournaments, creating schedules and ordering uniforms. I also took to reading, baking, and I even learned to knit to relieve the massive amounts of anxiety and depression I was feeling.
Green. Science, my favourite color to land on. My personal experience and interest in football was a catalyst for my interest in neuroscience. The research around concussions in the NFL is horribly fascinating. Anesthesia used during my surgery led to forty-eight hours of an unmovable leg. This extremely rare occurrence was something my surgeon had not seen before. After an electromyogram, it was discovered that my sciatic nerve was damaged. Upon further research, out of two hundred thousand ACL replacements, approximately 8 resulted in nerve damage — that is about 0.004% of cases. I find the topic of nerves and the way our body operates on neural signals so stimulating, and close to home, that I hope to study it in the future.
When separated into many disjointed parts, I am a sporty bookworm, I am a Canadian American; however, like a Trivial Pursuit wedge holder, I am a culmination of dissimilar, and colourful pieces that form a full, game-winning, wheel of cheese.