At our January Planning Meeting, Paul Overstreet suggested the Literacy Volunteers of Charlottesville/Albemarle as a possible club charity venture. His wife Maureen is a volunteer with the group, which tutors students in Basic Literacy and English as a Second Language.
That idea sort of simmered on the old back burner until April, when President Sherry Westfall polled the board to see if we would approve an official Shenandoah Region PCA entry in the Literacy Volunteers’ annual Wordplay Competition fundraiser. For a $500 entry fee, which helps fund many worthwhile endeavors, we could field a team of three in the competition Wednesday, April 16 at Charlottesville’s Paramount Theater.
PCA is willing to give its regions a subsidy of $450 toward charitable events of this sort, so we as a region, could make a difference in someone’s life with our treasury out only $50. The board agreed.
Sherry’s email call for volunteers who love words, vocabulary, pop culture, history, literature, etc., was …ahem… not entirely successful. PCAers are busy folks, after all.
I believe my response was “only as a last resort.” I guess that qualified me. Perhaps I will consider a different phrase next time.
Deane Parker came through at the eleventh hour with an enthusiastic, “Sherry, sign me up NOW, as I am ready to rock and roll.”
We also needed a team name, so we selected the “Shenandoah Porsche Einspritzers,” which loosely translates to “fuel injectors,” if memory serves.
So, on the evening of the big event, our blue-ribbon team of Sherry, Deane, and I slinked somewhat sheepishly into the Paramount with photographer and head cheerleader Jim Condon in tow.
We were as ready as possible to do battle with 35 other teams of trivia buffs, educators, librarians, journalists, and assorted pub crawlers and eggheads, many of whom had done this sort of thing before and even hold tryouts and practice sessions before the annual competition.
Me? I prepared by watching “Jeopardy” the night before (my first time in years). When I saw the list of categories, one of which was “Zoom Zoom,” I thought we had a shot. Unfortunately, it had absolutely nothing to do with Mazda Miatas or auto racing.
With Sherry recording our responses and Dean and I on each side of her firing off whatever answers popped into our heads, we advanced to the final round tied for 34th out of 36 teams. (OK, not good, but not dead last, either.)
The final challenge was a spelling test, and Sherry and Deane get the credit for saving us on this one, as I am the world’s worst speller, depending heavily on dictionaries and computer Spell Check.
We ended up in 30th place, which leaves plenty of room for improvement next year.
In retrospect, it was actually a lot of fun. Anybody interested in tryouts for the Shenandoah Region 2015 Wordplay team?
