"Is it taller than the average human adult?"
"No."
It's small. Excellent.
"Is it poisonous?"
"Yes."
I smile, but I am clueless as to what it is. I am clueless at the realization that I know jack shit about poisonous plants. It's just something I don't know nor would care to find out given the time and energy to. I feel as though I've already lost—but the stubborn jerk in me refuses to concede defeat so early in the game.
"Is it a flower?"
"Yes."
If I don't know anything about poisonous plants, I most certainly don't know anything about poisonous flowers. I'm a dead man on legs. But I continue. Pause for thought.
"If you were a pharmacy major, you would know this," he tell me.
His comment is patronizing. For one, he enunciates every consonant with razor sharpness, evoking the stereotypical nerdiness you'd only find in an exaggerated, family sitcom. The typical American college student does not enunciate so it's a well known fact that when you sharply pronounce your words, you give off one of two vibes to your audience: a) I am a foreigner and I have no idea how to speak your language or b) I am smarter than you and you must hear it in my verbal precision. This man is no Mexican.
Secondly, I had told him fifteen minutes earlier that I was a communication major and that I was into the arts—of course I wouldn't know the answer. But maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Maybe he forgot that fact. Or maybe he assumed that I was as smart and as knowledgeable as I pride myself in being. Or maybe—just maybe—he's the elitist I'm pretty sure I made him out to be and, at the moment, is. Regardless, I withhold my belligerence.
"Hold on," I tell him.
I might know this. I pause again and my random thoughts lead me to "Breath of Fire III," a video game I once played back in high school. In it, there's an item that inflicts instant death on an enemy, an item I clearly remember being a poisonous flower. It had a pleasant-sounding name, something with a tint of renaissance and royalty. I enter dork mode, replay the game in my head, and in seconds, the name comes back to me.
Yes. I am a huge nerd.
"Is it belladonna?" I say, grin across my face.
"No, but that's a good guess."
"You're a bitch," I silently speak.
In anger, I throw a reckless question.
"Is it colorful?"
"Yes."
His response doesn't help me because relative, subjective questions like "Is it colorful?" are vulnerable to misinterpretation. I don't normally ask relative questions but I lost my temper. I gather my thoughts again but he interrupts me.
"Yeah. It's difficult playing this game with me because I pick really esoteric topics."
Translation—I'm an intellectual jerk and I want to watch you suffer trying to figure out the answer to a question I'm confident you don't know.
Translation—I'm going to play a game you won't win because it validates my ego.
Translation—If you were blind and deaf, I'd danced circles around you and spout acidic remark about your mother.
Translation—I'm being a prick and enjoying every second of it.
I can't take his arrogance any longer—it's time for the forbidden question. It's a question that I'm pretty sure, in the judicial spectrum of guessing games, would be illegal enough to get me arrested in thirty-five states. It's a question that would most likely invite a huge "what the fuck" from "Twenty-One Question" purists and beckon a mob beating from twenty-one different angles. It's a question, I myself, am uncomfortable using but find myself employing because the man in front of me is playing me like a piano. Enough games, already. I throw out the trump card.
"Does it start with any of the letters from A-K?"
And for the first time since our work shift started, since the thermometer hit forty, since we started this little game about half and hour ago, since the rain start coming down, since the time I labeled him to be a humorless, spineless intellect, a person incapable of real laughter—he chuckles. Heartily.
"That's a really good question."
I turn to him with a found dumbness.
"Was it?"
"Yeah," he agrees. "Does it start with the letters from A-K? I would have never thought of using that! That question drastically narrows down the possible answers! Oh boy. I've got to try that next time!"
We both laugh. I laugh at the realization that this nerd is actually capable of laughing and I'm sure he's laughing at the irony of how someone who throws out aimless answers is capable of cleverly cheating the system on which Twenty-One Questions is based. Our reasons for laughter are, at core, different but both acknowledging of the other's potential. It's a feeling that comes with finding out something redeeming about someone you loathe, the kind of relief that comes with finding out the bear trap that's crushing your leg is doused with soothing morphine.
It makes you feel warm and gushy on the inside.
After our chuckling episode, the game continues and I continue to guess with amazing inaccuracy. After ten minutes of stumbling through floral obscurity, I finally concede.
"So what was it?" I ask.
"It was foxglove."
And all I can ask myself is, "What the fuck is a foxglove?"
You bastard.
