All Things, Trivial

The missus and I are hanging out this week with my parents in Florida.

It's a great deal all-around -- the grandparents get to spend time with their granddaughter, and we get a nice little break from the real world. This is the first time I've really relaxed since leaving Afghanistan (Fort Dix was easy but this isn't even comparable). In fact, yesterday I had to ask -- seriously -- what day of the week it was. If there were ever a litmus test to really *getting away,* that'd be it.

The other night we went to a trivia event sponsored by the retirement community in which my parents live. It was a lot of fun -- the range of ages, backgrounds, and experiences at the table came together to put us *just* outside the money, but we had a blast doing it.

And one of the reasons it was great is that the almost entirely senior citizen crowd didn't bring smartphones to the fight. In fact, most of the people there probably either didn't own them, or at least didn't know how to operate them.

Smartphones have taken a lot of the fun away from trivia events that are theoretically supposed to be about pooling together the collective experience and knowledge of a diverse group in order to achieve a goal. Seeing people use smartphones at trivia events is discouraging, esp. because it's hard to police the activity (hey, I was just texting!), so all you can do is just grin and bear it. I'm not necessarily blaming the event organizers, either, because it's hard for them to enforce the policy without turning into probing hall monitors.

Either way, glad to know the seniors are doing the trivia thing the right way!