My family loves playing trivia, especially on a cruise. This cruise had a trivia host from England called Andy. You’d think I would be able to understand him. But it was not to be. He had a problem pronouncing “th”. He would say “free” instead of “three”. In a sentence it might be obvious, but not necessarily right away. For example, “I have free balls”, could be “I have three balls”, but you wouldn’t know what he meant until after the sentence was over and he was onto the next sentence. It was quite confusing and made trivia less trivial, but more fun.

At one session Andy was absent and his replacement was from South Africa. They speak English in South Africa, but pronunciation could be quite different from the English pronunciation. One question was “What is Billingsgate Market known for”? She pronounced “Billingsgate” like “B’lingsgate”. She was also quite unaware of the geographic locations of some of the questions. One question was, “In which country is Alta Airport?” The answer is “Norway”. We wrote “Spain”.

The answer to another question was “Northern Ireland”. A contestant asked if “Ireland” was acceptable. The host replied, “Sure, it’s on the same continent”. This made us roar with laughter as we pointed out that Spain is on the same continent as Norway, we want a point for Spain.

After trivia we played Scattergories with the same host. After the game had ended, she asked, “Who thinks they have the most points”? Still giddy from the trivia, I shot my hand up and I said, “I think I have the most points”, with the emphasis on “think”.“ How many points do you think you have”? she asked. I answered, smiling, “I think I have 30 points”. Karen, my ex and one of my team, said, “But you don’t”. “Ah, but I think I do”, I answered and started giggling. Two contestants at another table started laughing. My son, Adam, another team member, raised his hand saying, “Well, I think I have 50 points.” And we both collapsed with the giggles. Karen was not amused and stormed off in disgust leaving two grown men giggling like little kids. Karen’s brother, David, was also not amused.