Alison Sommer '05: Robot Boner

Ethan and I at the local bar.

After I graduated from college I got married and moved to the rural small college town (population was about 9,000) where my husband and I worked. Living in a small town is kind of a funny way to spend your first years as an adult, and, as it turned out, all your child-free adult years. We'd run into coworkers at the grocery store(once while picking up the morning after pill, awkward!). We were considered regulars at all the restaurants (except Taco Johns, yuck. I'm a strait-up Taco Bell girl). And the rowdiest parties were held at the local Red Man's Club (I once seriously called the cops on a Metallica cover band they hired).

I could talk at length about the pros and cons of living in a small town. But I won't. Suffice it to say, small town living was nice, I liked knowing the people and being able to walk from one end of town to the other, but it was hard being so far away from my family, my hockey team, and Target (I'm never living more than 5 minutes from Target again). We eventually got new jobs and moved up to the Twin Cities, where we can be hip and eat sushi and go to shows (and by "shows"I mean Yo Gabba Gabba Live. Twice.), without driving over an hour to get there. But there's something I will always, always miss about those years in a small town: Bar Trivia Night.

Trivia night at the local bar was the best. It wasn't the kind of bar trivia you can do at Buffalo Wild Wings or those other fancy city bars. There were no TV screens, or electronic answer machines. No sir. There was a guy with a microphone and a box of Trivial Pursuit cards, and waitresses who handed out slips of paper. They'd read out the questions, you'd write down your team's answers, and each round you'd have a chance at winning a pitcher of beer, and the point totals were kept from week to week and at the end of the trivia season the top team got a tour of the local brewery.