Well there’s a lyric I can honestly say I’ve never noticed, despite hearing the song in which it resides approximately 1 zillion times.

The song in question is the wonderfully titled “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand.” Or, as we mortals know it, the one that samples B.B. King singing about being downhearted, baby.

It’s a song that sits comfortably in a ’90s niche — the phone booth was broken, at least, but what the hell’s a phone booth? — but I still love it. Often it makes me think of TGOTS and our post-college stint in Maine. But today it shot me to a later evening in Brookline, Mass., when I met up with a few of my less intimate work acquaintances for trivia night at an Irish pub.

When it came to work outings in the late ’90s and early ’00s, I mostly hung out with the same people and stumbled over the same ground. But occasionally I ventured out of my comfort zone to do fun things with other fun people.

And trivia night … how fun was that?! Answer: Wicked. I am a sucker for trivia, believing myself to be good at it (there was the time TGOTS and I considered auditioning for Jeopardy), even though I too often get stumped. That night, one of the questions asked for the title of this song. Our team got close, I think, but put a quarter in the guy’s hand instead of money.

I realized this morning that I have a weird enduring fondness for the concept of trivia nights, although in truth that was the first of only two times I’ve ever gone to one. The other was in Seattle; a co-worker and I awkwardly followed (stalked is such a loaded word) another co-worker to a tourist-y bar where he’d told us he was going, because she liiiiked him. When we arrived, he was surrounded by female friends, and after saying hi we were forced to slink off and sit at our own little table and pretend we were just coincidentally there for Love Of Trivia. I don’t think we even participated, just muttered the answers between ourselves and pretended to be writing things down when the emcee wandered our way.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that, to this day, when I see notices about trivia nights at various local pubs the real me gets excited. And then the imaginary, parallel me totally attends, and totally cleans up — and would totally know the full title of that song.

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