03 September 2008

Dorkiest Ladies Night. EVER.

My best friend from college, Kristin (also know as KFo, dates and lives with Goggles) recently moved to Brooklyn for her second year of medical school, which began yesterday. Goggles had left town for Labor Day weekend, went upstate with some of his college buddies. So on Friday night, Sarah, Kristin and I decided to have a ladies night of sorts.

(Of course we kicked the night off with “Lady” by Styxx,. And the only reason I have “Lady” on my computer is because Rachel was visiting 2 weekends ago. She forced me to download it. And then forced me to play it. Multiple times. So there it was, sitting on my recently played items list. And it seemed like a funny idea to blast it in my living room. Until I had it stuck in my head all night. I guess the joke was on me. Anyway, I just wanted to make it clear that I don’t just sit around listening to “Lady” on the regular—it was all Rachel’s doing).

Our first stop Friday night was dinner at Counter in the East Village. It’s an organic vegetarian place that Sarah found—they even serve organic beer/wine/cocktails.

Then, we went to check out KGB Bar, a few blocks away. Where I got retroactively carded. Seriously, the bartender served me my drink, I started drinking it, then walked away to try and find a table, walked back to Kristin, who was at the bar ordering, to tell her I had no luck on the table hunt. The bartender saw that I was with her (Kristin, by the way, barely hits the 5-foot mark) and got carded. Who gets carded simply for ASSOCIATING with short people.? Card the short people all you want. But don’t bring me into the fray.

Anyway, it was at KGB Bar where we overheard the cell phone conversation that would send the entire evening into a downward spiral.

Sarah happened to overhear a drunk girl asking someone on the other end of her cell phone: “What are the 4 railroads in Monopoly?”

We all agreed that this was quite possibly the GREATEST BAR TRIVIA QUESTION EVER.

Why? Because everyone will think that they know it. But I suspect that most of you would only be able to nail three out of four. And then you’d just wallow in agony for the rest of the night trying to figure out the fourth Just like we did.

We came up with Reading, Pennsylvania, and B&O….

None of us could name the fourth. And we were adamant that no reference sources could be used, be it Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, or a folded up McDonald’s Monopoly board in your wallet… But after a while, we did agree that each of us could call a “lifeline”, as long as that person used only brainpower as well (no reference sources allowed; i.e. the honor system).

Naturally, I called Evan.

I don’t know if you know this, but 91% of the time spent at our Grandma’s house growing up was spent playing Monopoly. The other 9% was divvied up amongst trips to Vacation Bible School, shopping at the Martinsburg Mall and eating breakfasts of Martin’s donuts and dinners of chicken casserole and orange jello salad.

I was ALWAYS the iron.

My lifeline did not disappoint. He knew the answer, so now I knew he answer. I was a veritable fountain of Monopoly Railroad knowledge ready to rain down on KGB Bar. But Sarah refused to let me speak the truth. I was silenced until she found out the information through her own channels. Censorship at KGB Bar? How apt.

We walked the streets in search of a new bar, and I suggested going into whatever the first bar we encountered on our left was. It was called Cherry Tavern and I could not re-direct you back to it if my life depended on it. While Sarah sat at our Cherry Tavern table, busy making up railroad names and hoping she’d serendipitously word-vomit it, I was hell bent on distracting myself from spoiling the answer.

So, as a distraction, I proceeded on a quest to name all 50 states. It took me about 5 minutes to write down 40 states. The next 5 states took some pondering, and I used up about another 6 or 7 minutes. That’s around the time I started drawing a picture of the United States.

If only I could show you my interpretation of a U.S. map 5 drinks into the night. It's an abstract masterpiece.

When the map failed to trigger the last 5 states in my brain, I drew the alphabet, because I started getting confused reciting it in my head.

Among the states I had trouble getting:
Wisconsin (which is really just a travesty. Since I know, what I assume can only be half the population of Wisconsin)
Utah
Maine
Kentucky (this state alone ate up the last 5 minutes. It does not exist in Leslie’s America.).

I had wasted a good 20 minutes before Kristin whispered "K" across the table, and another 3 before I realized it stood for Kentucky. By then. Sarah was getting close to naming the fourth railroad. She got as far as “Straight Line” and I thought I was going to lose it.

So in another effort to distract myself, I started naming state capitals. As many as I could name correctly in 3 minutes.

There is only one word to describe my State-Capitol-Naming-Ability: Over-hyped.

I won a National Geographic board game for my placement in the 5th Grade Geometry Bee at Tulip Grove Elementary School. I’ve incarcerated Carmen Sandiego AND her henchman multiple times. And now I don’t even know that the capitol of South Dakota ? (For the record, it’s Pierre).

In my defense, and to give you a sense of the state of my mind at this point, I wrote that Sacramento was both the capital of California AND Colorado. So, I didn’t EXACTLY bring my A-game.

Maybe it was the last drink I had, maybe it was my frustration in the degeneration of my U.S. geography skills. But when Sarah started laughing at me because I wrote “Columbus,” as the capital of South Carolina instead of "Columbia," I just smirked and said:

“Oh yeah? SHORT LINE. BITCH.”

That’s when our referee/babysitter/state-capitol-accuracy-checker Kristin had to cut us off, herd us onto the L Train and make sure we didn’t kill each other on the way home. Obviously I am still alive as I type this. But have you heard from Sarah lately? Did she succumb to my 2am subway lobster claw attack? Did she go insane from my multiple queries (40+) into whether or not I could look at her pictures from the night? Find out in the next installment of little-red-dress.blogspot.com. If I have more ridiculous weekend shenanigans to report on, you’ll know she made it through.