Trivial Pursuit: Ghetto Edition

I love board games.  I love card games.  I fucking love games and am a fierce competitor.  I must always win, or be on a winning team, or there will be hell to pay.  Most people who know me are aware of this, so oftentimes I have difficulty finding people to participate in game night.  Once I had to go all of the way to the housing projects of COV to remedy a Trivial Pursuit withdrawal. 

My friend Tony, who lived with his family in the housing project*, was hosting game night.  Soon, Tony, my sister and our friend Ashante were circled around the board, choosing teams.  I glanced around at my potential teammates:  My sister (no), Tony (hell no) and Ashante (no fucking way) and decided that I couldn't take the risk of any of these yahoos bringing me down.  I was undefeated at Trivial Pursuit and tonight there would be no exception.  It was Team Me against Team Everyone Else.

As predicted, I had all of my pie pieces before Team Everyone Else (TEE) received one of theirs.  My next step would be to make it to the center where TEE would choose a category for my winning question.  I made it to the center over and over again and each time they giggled and chose "Sports and Leisure", my Achilles Heel.  Clearly I hoped for a "Leisure", but I kept getting "Sports", and continued to miss the question.  Meanwhile, TEE was catching up--scoring pie after pie--until they, too, were making their way to the center for the winning question.  I planned to stick their dumb asses with "History", arguably the most difficult category, and they knew it.

I admit, I was nervous.  These hoodrats were not going to beat me at my own game.  The game had gone on for hours.  Nature had called, I had to pee and couldn't wait.  I returned from the bathroom, declared "History" as their category, and slowly read their question to them.  I can only recall that the question involved the Russian Revolution and I was certain there was no way in hell that any of them knew the answer.  Almost immediately, however, Tony pipped up with the correct answer, making TEE the winners and not Team Me (TM).

Naturally, I was enraged.  Obviously, they cheated.  I accused them of reading the card while I was gone.  They maintained that they won fair and square.  One thing led to the next and I threw the board into the air, along with the cards and dice and pie pieces and whatever else I could find.  "Fuck all of you!  I'm out of here!" I screamed.  I took one proud, last look at my destruction and headed out the door, slamming it behind me.

My sister followed me out the door.  She wanted a ride home.  I was like, "Hell no!  Your ass can stay here with your new best friends!"  I continued to walk to my car, which by now was covered in about six inches of snow.  Oh yeah, during our hours and hours and hours long Trivial Pursuit game, a blizzard decided to show up.  Coupled with two of the whitest girls in the land, that blizzard made the ghetto of ghettos the whitest it's ever been.  I sadly discovered that there was a zero percent chance that my little Honda was going to make it out of this parking lot.

While I was shoveling snow with scraps of cardboard and my bare hands, my sister was inside calling a taxi.  I had to swallow my pride and ask her if I could ride in her taxi with her.  At first she acted like she was going to let me, then once the taxi arrived, she started running towards it--hence her actions stated otherwise.  I caught up to her, grabbed her by her coat, she slipped, and a full-on sister girl fight ensued.  Tony and Ashante came running out of the apartment.  I was mid strangle when Ashante intervened.  I had to direct my rage somewhere, so I directed it towards him.  I was, after all, still upset about the game.

In my peripheral, I could see my sister jump in the taxi and slam the door.  I grimaced as I witnessed the taxi drive down the snow covered street.  I was fucked....really fucked this time.  I released my hands from Ashante's neck.  I calmly asked Tony if I could use his phone to call my own taxi.  He let me, but the only cab company in town that was still operating in the blizzard had at least a three hour wait.

Shortly thereafter, I was a cowering white girl, apologizing to a scary, ghetto dwelling, black family for destroying their living room, waking up the whole house with my tantrum, attempting to murder Ashante, and disturbing their neighbors.  Yes, people in the projects are apparently more disturbed by two middle class white girls fist fighting in the snow over a Trivial Pursuit game than the shootings or drug deals that regularly happen there.  I begged them to allow me to stay.  After picking up zillions of tiny game pieces and trivia cards off the dirty floor, I was finally able to rest my head on a sticky couch while snuggled up with a blanket that likely belonged to their dogs.  Perhaps this was my victory march.

So, I guess that's what I get for "livin'" in the ghetto.

*Yes, I know poor people! But it is only because I was obsessed with a skater/graffiti artist called Fever and I thought he would think I was cool and more street if I hung out in housing projects.