Irish Trivia

It's been almost a year now that I have been going to my same bar in my work neighborhood. Early January will be a year officially. But otherwise, it's more or less been 12 months and I have befriended all the weekday bartenders, found my best partners at darts, know the usuals, and meet newcomers along the way. And yet somehow I always forget that Tuesdays they do trivia there around 8pm. I actually kinda like trivia, but it's just annoying at that place and at that time in particular.

So last night I stopped in for "one drink" (yep) and was hanging out with my Irish friends, when suddenly it was 8pm and trivia was starting. If I thought it was hard to understand the Irish lads with their accents while music was on, imagine trying to understand them with someone shouting in a mic and yelling questions and playing audio clips too. We all hate the trivia so we packed it in and I was planning to head home but they told me to come on over to their apartment a few blocks away instead. The older one is married and probably in his 50s or 60s, and the younger one is in his 30s lives with them. Since I've been friends with them for about a year now and they're so friendly and fun, I wasn't sure what I was doing, but I accepted.

IT WAS SO NICE! When we got there, the wife was up and about and being so cute and telling us to go about our business. She's a native Gaelic speaker, and yet I could understand her English better than the guys'. They made and served a hot drink of Jameson, honey, brown sugar and cloves which was really strong but also really delicious. We were having so much fun that Maryanne came in, loaded up her arms with Hennessy and Jameson and some other stuff, and came back with her own drink and joined us for the night. And she was SO CUTE and so sweet!

I don't feel that they ever tame down their accents for me, maybe they articulate, but when they get going with each other, I get more and more lost and can't understand at all where the conversation is going or what it's become. I figured I was playing my own trivia game: just to understand what they were saying half the time. And I didn't always get the answers right, by the way.

I really think it was one of my more civilized and refined nights in New York City. I don't often do anything that takes place in a living room, much less with adults. And hot whiskey. Win. Win. Win.