Spring Ahead

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin was chock full of good ideas.  But contrary to the legend, he did not invent Daylight Saving Time.

That honor has to go to this guy.

New Zealander George Hudson.

Modern DST was first proposed by him in 1895.  Hudson, an amateur entomologist, wanted more daylight hours after work so he could collect insects.  In a paper presented to the Wellington Philosophical Society, he suggested a two hour daylight-saving shift.  His idea garnered considerable interest but it wasn’t until after World War II that it really caught on here in North America.

I don’t care who invented it.  Today has to be my FAVORITE day of the year.

I can’t stand it when it’s gloomy and dreary at four o’clock.  Not only is it depressing, but I don’t like to walk around in the dark very much.

I revel in the freedom of bright seven pm skies.

Now exactly what am I going to do with the upcoming gift of light?  I’ve given it tons of thought and I know just what I want to do with those extra hours of daylight.

Dear Readers, I want to play trivia at a bar in my neighborhood.

Don’t scoff.  This is a BIG deal for me.  I’ve really researched it and I think I’m ready to take the plunge.

It won’t be easy, however.  I’m not very comfortable walking into a bar alone for any reason.

Maybe it’s my age.  Maybe it’s because I never drank and saw no reason to ever go into a bar. Maybe it’s because I got married the first time at nineteen and the bar scene just never figured in my social life.

Or maybe it’s because the last time I was in a bar by myself, (Ditka’s two years ago. Waiting for my brother and sister-in-law and her brother and sister-in-law to meet me there for dinner) I had a crummy experience.  I had gotten there early and the hostess wouldn’t seat me and suggested that I wait in the bar.  I picked the very last seat hoping to be inconspicuous as possible.  But to no avail.  I was totally hassled by two out-of-town clowns who pestered me so much that I had to go back and wait for the the family at the host stand.)

Or maybe because I read this book and it made a lasting impression on me.

Who knows?  I just have a going-to-a bar-by myself phobia that has been really hard to whip.

But this is my Spring to beat it.  I’m motivated.

As some of you probably know, I’m a member of the National Trivia Bowl Hall of Fame.

(if you’re really interested in how I got there, please read “Rookie of The Year.“)

Here’s a photo taken in the early 80’s at the University of Colorado’s Glenn Miller Auditorium when I was still competing.

(That’s Mark Spinnato, yours truly, Harold Ceasar and Mark Boulanger.  Don’t ask what the team name meant.  It was a compilation of all our former team names.  I was “Willie.”)

Testing my mettle against the best trivia guys in the United States was fun and I loved it. But I retired from the field with honors long ago and haven’t done much more than fill in the blanks for friends (“You know….What’s his name?  He was in that war movie.  What was it called, Ellen?”) since iPhones and Wikipedia were invented.

But there’s a bar in my ‘hood that advertises “Trivia Tuesdays” and I have been licking my chops to get in there show the locals how we old timers do it.

But just to be on the safe side, I had my son Nick vet the place.  One night last year, I made him check it out.

Nick strolled in, scoped out the scene, took in the young couples, gay guys and old drunks and quickly turned to me with his report.

“You’ve got no worries, Dude. NOBODY here is going to be interested in you.  You’re good.”

So with those few extra hours of sunlight at the end of day, there is going to be a showdown at the OK Trivia Corral.

There’s a new gunslinger in town.

And her name is Ellen Ross.

And Ben Franklin?

Go fly a kite.