That time when I cracked under pressure…

This past weekend was my company Christmas party. One of the “fun” things we did at the party was some music trivia. Little known fact about me (well… only little known to anyone who doesn’t actually know me in person… I LOVE all things trivia. I watch Jeopardy every day. Its just how I roll).


For the game, each table was given a piece of paper with lines to fill in the song title and artist for 10 different songs. The DJ would play a small blip of a song and we had to guess it.


Well, our team was AWESOME and we rocked at it. The bosses thought that songs like 100% Pure Love by Crystal Waters would be “obscure” and “difficult to guess”… come on now…


Anyhoo… it came down to a tie between us and one other table. Each team had to pick a representative from the table to go head to head in a tie breaker round. One song. First one to guess the song name or artist wins.


My team picked me. It was a smart choice.


So I got up there in front of my entire company and their spouses and shook hands with my competitor. It was on like Donkey Kong.


I was in the zone.


They started playing a song.


Nothing.


Both of us up there looked at each other and started laughing. We had NO CLUE. Apparently it was some Brooks and Dunn song but they didn’t even get to the actual singing in the clip and it wasn’t any Brooks and Dunn song I had ever heard before.


So the big boss man picked a new song with the DJ. They said “you guys will definitely know this one!”


I got right back in the zone. Hands on my hips. Eyes on the ground so I wouldn’t be distracted by anything.


Song started playing.


BOOM! My hand goes up. I knew it right away.


So I blurted out the first thing that came to me when the microphone came near me

“BIG WILLY STYLE!!!”


The Boss man says “yes… oh wait… no…. sorry, that’s not right!”


As he handed the microphone to my competitor I clued in to what I actually said and pulled one of these…

(at exactly 20 seconds... thats how I felt...) 

The song was “Gettin’ Jiggy With It” by Will Smith.

I knew that too. All the words floating around in my head were “Will Smith!! Jiggy!! Will Smith!!!” but instead I shouted out the album name.

Damn it. Five days later I’m still mad at myself for bombing.


After the other team got it right, I went back to my table. My adorable older coworker who knows how much I LOVE Jeopardy turned to me and said “you better not freeze up like that if you’re ever on Jeopardy now…”



*** As a side note, a very important side note, I would like to point out that one of the songs was “Hip Hop Hooray” by Naughty by Nature. I saw the other teams sheet after the game was over and they wrote “Hip Hop Away”. That is not the right song so TECHNICALLY we won. We don’t get the prize but I know we won and that’s all that matters… ***