Dear Friends,
This past weekend in San Francisco, I sat down with my oldest friend, Tia, to record a video conversation for friends from our school years. Tia was visiting from Germany where she has been living with her German-born husband for more than 30 years. She has two beautiful children and two thriving careers as a nutritionist and flight attendant for Lufthansa Airlines.
Tia and a bunch of my other closest friends attended my wedding 34 years ago this month. I have fond memories of Tia and others joining us on the reception area to rock to “Rock Lobster” and to dance to “Let’s Dance” and “Safety Dance.” Thrilled to have married my lifetime sweetheart in Kate, I left everything on the dance floor, I don’t think I have danced that long or that joyously since.
I remember talking to Tia on the phone when we were both college students. It felt strange to me to live in a different city from her, for she joined my class at the Washington Waldorf School in about fourth grade. she followed me—at least in the version of the story I like to tell—to The Field School for high school after we graduated from Waldorf. I had seen Tia just about every school day for 12 years.
In 4th grade, the boys debated whether Tia was the prettiest girl in the class. Tito, the most confident boy in our class, was somehow assigned a desk next to Tia’s, and during recess Tito proudly displayed the little scratches she gave him during their classroom roughhousing, and he seemed almost as pleased by the attention as wounded by it. Clearly Tito and Tia spoke each other’s language.
Later in elementary school, my brother Oliver and I would encounter Tia and her younger sister, Andrea, who was exactly Oliver’s age. Andrea used to torture Oliver the way that Tia tortured Tito. We didn’t really understand girls.
As Tia and I became closer, I showed my affection and appreciation with acts of service. Because Tia and I lived about six blocks from each other, sometimes I would walk her home while carrying her books (as we saw done in Act II of Wilder’s Our Town and in Archie comics). When I had an afternoon Washington Star paper route from 1979 to 1981, I would leave an extra newspaper on her doorstep, even though she and her family were not subscribers.
In high school, I created a fraternity of the coolest guys in high school, The Trendsetters. Despite the outrageous art-based pranks we pulled off while seniors (We once spray-painted a moose and a message on a six-king-size sheet mural and hung it from the third floor of our school building), our school principal, Elizabeth Ely, never chastised or punished us, mostly because she (somehow) knew that most of our members followed my lead in not smoking or drinking. She saw our particular strain of nerd-dom as promoting healthy lifestyles and good choices.
The Trendsetters had one straight-A student and one female member: Tia. All the Trendsetters felt comfortable with her, and she tolerated our antics and immaturity. She also loved accompanying us to the movie-theater adventures which were such an important part of our lives back then.
So, in that interview in Huntington Park next to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, where we made a video to share with friends from our school years, Tia revealed on the video that she figured out that she and I first met in the fall of 1976, exactly 50 years ago.
Tia was in the room during most of my formative educational experiences of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. After we all graduated from college, Tia and our closest friend Tito and I walked through the woods of Glover-Archbold Park, the park where Tito and I spent so much of our early childhood (and that being the last time we saw our late friend in DC). Tia came to support Kate and me on our wedding day, and in 1998 she and her husband and one-year-old came to walk through our unfinished first house in Davis just before the walls were added. Now, thanks to Lufthansa, we meet irregularly in San Francisco to talk about home cooking, parenting, and old and departed friends.
Her visit reminded me of my friend’s gift for making an old story feel newly alive: she smiles readily, remembers parts of our childhood that I had forgotten, laughs without meanness, and makes even a short visit feel like a return home.
I’m grateful to have known such a lovely and loyal person for five decades. I never had a sister, but if I were to adopt one at this advanced age, she would be my friend Tia.
Expect delightfully warm weather this evening with the misters will be cooling all of us at the Sudwerk patio. I hope you can join us on the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for almost everyone on this mid-September evening. The rest of you can sit inside where players will still be having fun. As Albert Schweitzer said, “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” I encourage you to come early to snag a table. Also, take heed that the performance of the quiz may move along quickly — the entire quiz is 763 words long!
In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on actual construction specifications, advertising campaigns, alliterative two-word phrases, American literary awards, animated films, broadcasting professions, California locations, castle locations, comedy sketches, conservatives, contracts, dark comedies, distinctive architectural designs, distinctive marks, dividing lines, ecosystem cycles, etymologies, film franchises, franchises, French people, historical periods, household cleaning tools, intimate slow-dance ballads, jazz techniques, Midwest states, music producers, pressures, prominent authors, religious settlements, romantic moments, spouse collaborations, state geographies, statesmen, strength and stability, voter registrations, water-adjacent flight patterns. current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare.
Thanks to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscribers Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions The Mavens who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine!
Best,
Dr. Andy
Three questions from last week:
- Current Events – Names in the News. It was announced recently that Jalen Brunson will be hosting the season opener of Saturday Night Live on September 26. What two words best describe Brunson’s occupation?
- Sports. The website Bleacher Report says that “By just about any estimation, [one Florida NFL team has] the weakest roster in the league after purging veterans all offseason.” Name this team placed last in the power rankings.
- Shakespeare. In which of the five acts does the great storm begin in the Shakespeare play King Lear?