Do you believe in fate?
I’ve been looking to put on a Quiz Night in the town centre. There used to be one which was rather popular amongst students in the local Varsity pub. It ceased about nine years ago, and I’ve recently been looking to resurrect the concept. The only problem is that I’ve been unable to find anyone who’d be willing to act as a quizmaster. I’d do the job myself, but when I was in my late-teens, I had a crack at chairing the aforementioned quiz on behalf of Pottsy, the usual host who was taking a week’s holiday. It seemed a simple enough task, all I had to do was read - he’d even kindly prepared the questions for me. But in the event, I’d never anticipated the level of exception to which my incorrect but innocently naive pronunciation of the Polish currency was to be taken. I can still recall some of the complaints; ranging from the snipe: “You’re no Bob Holness are you son?” to the haunting vision of the man inadvertently firing shards of angry spittle at me from behind his wall of bared teeth, as I was personally blamed for all his personal failures. It felt as if everyone in the room hated me. With the possible exception of the team that won; who only complimented me with mere ambivalence.
As I was leaving the gym today, I clapped eyes on a vaguely familiar face coming toward me from the other side of the turnstile. It appeared that my face was familiar to him too, since he stopped me at the entrance. “Where do I know you from?” he asked. My mind raced desperately to locate this person’s identity through my mind’s database, before finally recognising him as Pottsy, the old quizmaster from ten years ago!
Could it really be? Given my current desire to start a quiz night being hindered only by a lack of a quizmaster, to now see this vintage quizmaster’s face appear before me seemed a tremendous co-incidence.
“Was it from The Varsity?” I asked.
“Yeah that must be it” he nodded.
Obviously, the opportunity seemed too good to pass, so I chanced my arm, “Are you still doing any quizzes”
“Nah” he replied.
“Why’s that? Is it a lack of time or inclination or something?”
“Er.. well, both really”
I was disappointed, but wondered if I’d be able to re-ignite some enthusiasm by announcing my new project.
“It’s just I was thinking of doing a quiz in town, and I wondered whether you’d be interested in it”.
He gave me a strange, kind of slightly indignant look, before politely but efficiently replying, “No, not really. Anyway, better crack on, nice to see you, I’m sure we’ll see each other soon”.
And with that, we parted. I was disappointed that such a strange and aptly timed meeting with this old acquaintance had not ended with the conclusion that I’d wished for. As I walked across the car park, I considered that if fate did indeed exist, it seemed cruel for it to have engineered such a situation, only for its possibilities to be so abruptly dismissed.
But then another, more pressing realisation swept over me. That man hadn’t actually been Pottsy at all. I suddenly recalled that it was in fact someone I used to wash dishes with at a kitchen I worked at as a student. The whole exchange had been a case of mistaken identity. It had all been a big lie.
I felt a bit embarrassed. Wondering what I must have looked to him, my first inevitable reaction was to run back through the contents of conversation that had just taken place.
The haste in which the conversation was ended certainly gave an air of discomfort.
I had been working with the pre-conceived notion which assumed he was a man who used to host quizzes. Due to the fact that he was not aware of ever hosting quizzes, nor even actually didn’t have much interest in quizzes, I guess I must have appeared rather lonely and presumptive man. A man so bereft of friends, that he would invite anyone who looked only
vaguely familiar, to assist him in forming a quiz team.. What sort of a person would go around asking barely recognisable acquintances to go out sit with them for the duration of a whole evening of quiz? Probably someone rather lonely, who rarely goes out and spends a lot of time alone in front of a computer. It would be a rather amusing stereotype if only it didn’t fit me so well.
So the question remains – does fate exist? To be honest I’m not really sure, but I’d certainly prefer to believe it doesn’t. Because if it did, this would mean that I am forever fated to engineer all of my social interactions (whether they be a one-to-one exchange or addressing a room full of people during an otherwise light-hearted general knowledge game), like a graceless, half-witted twat. And if this is the case, I might as well just save time and give up all this ‘talking to people’ stuff right now.
If I’ve run off to live in a monastery somewhere by the time you read this, you’ll know what I finally decided upon.
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