The Brain told me hours before there was no way she could make it. Yet at 8:45 she rounded the corner, telling a joke to a friend. Surprised, we shouted a greeting into the glow that surrounded the bar after dark.
If our relief was almost palpable, there was a reason. The Brain was our trivia all-star. Her specialty was science, but with a seemingly eidetic memory very few questions were out of her realm.
This week, question after question would have stumped the rest of the team, but the Brain had the answer to them all. She knew the organ TB effects (the lungs). She knew which card game ranks the cards ATKQJ (pinochle). And despite a small hiccup in the hockey category--Gordie Howe not Bobby Orr won three straight MVPs in the 50s --she knew that Gary Larson is the author of The Far Side.
When I asked her once how she remembered one fact after another, she told me they came from her lizard brain.
The term is an interesting one. As far as I know, the human brain shares little in common with the lizard's. But when we want to refer to the deepest parts of our subconscious, the places where our memories are lodged most stubbornly, that is the term we choose.
When I write there are moments when I get to access my own lizard brain. Others may call it their muse or their inspiration, but whatever they name it the idea is the same: we find something in the depths of our mind that even we didn't know was there.
Perhaps it's appropriate that we consider this part of ourselves somehow distinct from the rest of our consciousness. The nature of the lizard brain dictates this and, in turn, contributes to its inherent mystery. When you pull up something you didn't know you knew, it feels an awful lot like it comes from an undiscovered place.
For most of us, these moments of clarity and discovery happen only once in a great while. The Brain, however, seemed to live most of her life in that country. There was rarely a question that she flat couldn't answer. Even if she wasn't always correct, always she seemed to come up with a reasonable answer.
If anything, the team relied on her too much. Although brilliant, she certainly was failable. She convinced us that "Off the Wall" not "Bad" or "Thriller" had the most #1 hits. And neither her guess (an eagle) nor mine (the flag) was the correct answer to "What image was on the first forever stamp" (liberty bell).
Still she is the best player in our little bar and her answers had us in the game for the final question: "The following three actors won the academy awards in the same year for best actor, best supporting actress, and best supporting actor, respectively: Al Pacino, Marisa Tomei, Gene Hackman. Which movie won best picture that year? Hint: one of the actors mentioned was in the movie"
A complicated one, but once we figured out what the question was asking, we tried to figure it out. We knew at once that Tomei won for "My Cousin Vinny", which we knew didn't win best picture and which we thought was made in 1992. Now the question was what movie won the 1992 academy award for best picture.
Unfortunately, movies are one of the weakest categories for our team. We couldn't come up with a whisper of answer. Our lizard brains would not work.
In the end we had to hazard a guess. We narrowed it down to "A Few Good Men" (none of those actors were in it) and "Scarface" (made a decade before). We didn't even consider the correct answer (Unforgiven). And so we scratched our heads and wondered at the silence we found there.
Halftime Question:
Match each item to its color. There is one extra color: purple, red, blue, green, orange.
1. Arnold Schwarzenegger 80s film titles.
2. Fred's Ascot in Scooby Doo
3. The Gs in Google
4. The horseshoes in lucky charmsg
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