Fuzzy Sedalia Memories: The Story of The Andy Griffith Trivia Battle

Okay, I was probably a weird kid.  Okay, okay. I was. 

When I was a kid, my Mom made me go outside every day in the summertime. It didn't matter if it was super hot or just regular hot, out in the backyard we went. Of course we never wanted to go, but by the end of the day when it was time for dinner, we didn't want to go back in. My Mom and Dad were The Adults, which meant you did what they said and if you didn't you'd get a swat on the hind end. They were in charge, and that meant they were in control of what we watched on the TV.

Sure, Mom let me watch some kid shows like Double Dare and Heathcliff The Cat or Pound Puppies with some Muppet Babies in the afternoons sometimes. But when Dad came home, it was what the adults wanted to watch, and you watched it or you left the room.

So that meant I have seen a LOT of older TV shows that my Mom liked. Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone, and most notably, The Andy Griffith Show. My Dad liked stuff like In Living Color and Late Night with David Letterman (we loved when Dave was on cable because you could watch it at 6:00 p.m.). So I grew up not watching major TV shows like Saved By the Bell, The Cosby Show, the Wonder Years, etc etc, because that's not what my parents watched.

The big one for my Mom was The Andy Griffith Show. It was on in reruns (still is) constantly, and it didn't matter if we'd seen that episode seventy times, we were gonna watch it again. Little did I know that having watched that much Andy would pay off eventually.

I was about ten years old, in fifth grade at Horace Mann Elementary.  I remember being in the downstairs Art Room of Mr. Knapp. I forget what the occasion was, but it was probably something like the last day of school or a holiday eve or something, because we were not required to buckle down. We were goofing off a little, and there became some kind of girls vs boys competition. Mr. Knapp decided to settle things with a Trivia contest - and he chose Andy Griffith Show trivia.

I was shy at first, nervous.  I didn't want to answer too many questions because I didn't want to look like a nerd who knew stuff about old TV shows. But... the boys were winning. I couldn't have that. So eventually, I had to step in. I single handedly took over on behalf of my fellow ten year olds.

I killed.

I knew every single question.

Admittedly, it made me a little weird to be ten years old knowing so much about a show that came out twenty years before I was born, but c'est la vie.

I don't even remember what we were competing for - all I remember is that my sweet Andy Griffith Trivia actually did something good for me. The girls won, and all was right in the world of Miss Webber's fifth grade class. Or at least it was for the girls.

Trivially yours,
Behka