The Table Quiz Prize

I don't know if being a good contestant at table quizzes means that you're really intelligent or that your head is full of trivia from watching too much TV. If we’re winning the quiz it's the former, if we're losing it's definitely the latter.

The School held a table quiz on Sunday afternoon. The kids were really keen to go. It was supposed to be a "family table" so there were two of us and the two kids.

We arrived a little late to the vast hall and it was full of tables of families who had added on intelligent uncles, grandmothers and friends to their teams. Some of the tables seemed to have two or three families and one was an intimidating table full of teachers.

Each table had its score written up at the end of each round. We watched our score rise steadily but we never excelled. I had an embarrassing failure of memory when I could only remember three of the four names of the "Sex and the City" characters.

There was a table full of enticing prizes at the top of the hall. It had lots of nice looking bottles and some rugby balls and pens for the kids. I was confident that we wouldn’t go away empty handed.

The winning team collected their prize and there were a good few runner up prizes. I noticed there were still lots of prizes left. My youngest son had been up to look at the prizes a few times and he wanted to buy one of them. I tried to explain that you can’t buy prizes. He quite rightly pointed out that I had told him that one of the Mothers had bought the prizes for the quiz so that we should be able to buy a prize.

The quizmaster handed out prizes for other categories of winners including prizes for the team with the best handwriting, the fastest team at handing back the answers, the best dressed team and the happiest team.

My younger son was getting quite annoyed at this stage. It was his brother’s fault we didn’t get a prize for being the happiest team and my dress sense had lost us the best dressed team prize.

We left empty handed and my younger son was furious. My elder son had got a bit bored during the prize giving and had wisely gone outside to play football (and avoid humiliation) with his mates in the yard.

I explained the categories of winners to my elder son later that night. We got a bit giddy and made up a few silly categories: The hairiest table, the table with the best belchers etc. He said that we should have won the prize for the table with no prize. We both started to giggle.