Quiz Bowl Quotes

Sure, QuizBowl wasn't a cool activity to join and, yeah, the idea of answering difficult questions in front of an audience terrified me. But it wasn't anything like the fear that accompanied my drowning nightmare - harrowing and visceral. No, this fear made me feel fizzy. Hopeful. In fact, this fear felt like waking up do discover I am still here.

I knew the risks. All part of being on the quiz bowl team. Not everyone makes it back alive.

When I joined QuizBowl, I hadn’t expected to like it so much. But then, that’s the sweetness of trying something new.

i really, really like beating people. Note: I am not saying I really, really like winning. Winning is a more abstract concept, and in a quiz bowl, winning usually meant having to come back in the next round and do it all over again. No, I liked beating people. I liked seeing the look on the other team's faces when I got a question they couldn't answer. I loved their geektastic disappointment when they realized they weren't good enough to rank up. I loved using trivia to make people doubt themselves.

Southwick informs us that a Colonel Townsend of Dublin had the ability to stop his heartbeat at will and 'at last lost his life in the act,' that lightning turns milk sour, and that Adam, of Adam-and-Eve fame, was born on October 28, 4004 B.C. Adam is a Scorpio!

There was a mailman I loved as a little girl. He would stop at the communal mailbox On the street In the center of the apartment complex And begin sorting mail away Into 150 different little boxes We lived in 1202 I would rush from my house To greet the mailman And he would talk to me as he worked Filing away bills and cards and coupons He would ask me questions Quiz me And give me a piece of Bazooka gum For every question I got right I would spin around and crush my sneakers rocking up and down on my toes I would curl one piece of hair Around my finger while I thought of the answers I would slide my tongue between my teeth and the windows where they were missing And between every mailbox The mailman would look at me and smile He’d pat me on the cheek And tell me That I was as smart as he was. As smart as any man. And I believed him. Because why wouldn’t I? I was 8. I knew that George Bush would win the election. I knew the Pythagorean theorem. I read 300 books from the public library And I could draw every animal by memory. I liked him ’cause he gave me chewing gum And talked to me in his low voice Calm and soft Not the shrill, high-pitched voice They would use on my baby brother. One day the mailman didn’t show up for work I ran out and stopped in my tracks There was a different man there I asked if my friend was sick The imposter ignored me The new mailman showed up a few days in a row The kids in the neighborhood said The old one had a heart attack in a bowl of spaghetti And died with noodles up his nose I cried One Wednesday I ran out to the new mailman And asked if he had any gum He told me to stay away Because he didn’t want to get in trouble like Charlie I didn’t know my friend’s name was Charlie And I didn’t know how I could have gotten him in trouble So I asked my mom How you could give someone a heart attack And she rubbed her head and stretched her feet across the couch and said, “It feels like you’re gonna give me one right now.” I didn’t want my mom to die too. So I hid in my room And I cried Because I was 8 And a murderer.