A Not-So-Trivial Trivia Question

Sometimes, even a trivia question can bring unexpected thoughts, and/or memories to mind.

A Not-So-Trivial Trivia Question


         This evening, I was walking through a quiz about the 1960’s online. Since that was the decade that also saw me graduate high school, start college, and get my first two real jobs, I figured I stood a good chance of passing that trivia quiz.

         What I DIDN’T figure on was one of those questions feeling like a punch in the stomach.

         The question? “#10: What 1964 Beatles hit was their first number-one single in the United States?”

         I immediately saw a handful of titles from their early days scroll in front of my eyes. “Please, Please Me”. “Paperback Writer”. “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. “P.S. I Love You”. “Yesterday”. “Elinor Rigby”, and more.

         As that list of titles ran through my head, and I started trying to decide which one had been their first chart-topper in the US in 1964, I suddenly stopped, and started lightly crying, as memories of the 14 short years my late wife Linda and I had together pushed their way into my thoughts, as I suddenly realized that I would not have known hardly ANY of these songs, let alone anything about the band members themselves, had it not been for Linda’s presence in my life.

         When we met, in 1966, it was my senior year in high school, her junior year. She graduated in ’67, and we eloped in ’68, both of us 19 (the legal age in Ohio then was still 21, not 18). There were two subjects into which Linda had poured all her energy for a number of years by then, and into which she would continue to pour that energy: the Beatles, and the Cincinnati Reds.

         She was a walking encyclopedia on both subjects. Where the Reds were concerned, every season she could tell you, anytime you asked (she didn’t have to look anything up; she knew it all): all the positions any player could play, their batting average, how long they’d been with the team, whether they were right- or left-handed, and more. Her favorite player was Johnny Bench.

         And, no matter how sick she was, she just HAD to watch, or listen, to every single game, including the late ones on the west coast. She even kept spiral notebooks of her own handwritten score cards for every single game, for six years running.

         As for the Beatles, she followed them from the very beginning. The record collection she built, which I still have, includes not only every album they released here in the U.S., but it included duplicates of some of those albums, with one copy being the original monaural version, and the other, the re-issued stereo version that came later. But the surprise here is that, her collection also includes two 45-RPM singles released only in England. Those two 45’s have the SMALL center hole like our ALBUMS do here in the US. How she got her hands on those, I have no idea. 😊And, she could also tell you which of the four of them sang the lead on any given song. And, she also knew much more about each of them, individually, that I have no chance of remembering now. Her favorite of the four? Paul McCartney.

         After my mind settled down after having everything you just read flash through my mind, I had my answer to that trivia question. Their first chart-topping hit in the U.S.? “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. And I just smiled warmly as I spied the listed answer to the question, since I noticed right away that it was the same as my answer.

         Even today, 45 years after her death, I can still immediately recognize a majority of their early songs, even before the title is revealed in the lyrics, or a popular quote in the lyrics brings the title to mind.

         Thanks for the education on the Fab Four, Squeek, darling! I miss talking about them with you, sweetheart.