The Family Quiz Champion
UNITED STATESSHORT STORY7
Marcus
12/27/20251 min read
Every holiday, Marcus’s family held a trivia tournament.
Marcus had won three years in a row.
He memorised capitals, presidents, planets, and obscure animal facts. He studied for weeks before the gathering.
This year, Aunt Renee changed the rules.
Each family member submitted five questions based on personal experiences.
The first question was: What was Grandpa’s first job?
Marcus did not know.
His cousin answered correctly: washing buses.
The next asked which song Mum played repeatedly during college.
Marcus guessed wrong.
By the end of the first round, he was in last place.
“This isn’t trivia,” he complained. “It’s family gossip.”
Grandpa laughed.
The questions continued.
What food did Aunt Renee burn at her first dinner party?
Which cousin broke an arm climbing a fence?
What country had Grandma always wanted to visit?
Marcus realised he knew facts about distant stars but not the people sitting around him.
During a break, he began asking questions.
Grandpa explained that he washed buses at night while attending school during the day. Mum played the same song because it reminded her of home. Grandma wanted to visit Senegal because her childhood friend had moved there.
Marcus stopped caring about winning.
In the final round, each player had to tell one story nobody else knew.
Marcus described getting lost during a school trip and pretending afterward that he had been “exploring.”
His family laughed.
Grandma won the tournament.
Marcus received a small notebook as a joke prize labelled THINGS YOU SHOULD PROBABLY KNOW ABOUT US.
He actually used it.
Throughout the year, he recorded stories: Dad’s worst haircut, Aunt Renee’s first apartment, Grandpa’s bus route.
At the next holiday tournament, Marcus still studied capitals.
He also reviewed the notebook.
This time, however, he wrote a question of his own:
What did Marcus learn after losing last year?
The answer was not “study harder.”
It was that knowing facts about someone and knowing the person were not the same achievement.