World Cup of Privilege

Around our house, we are World Cup obsessed.

We’ve got a poster with the brackets on the wall. We’re plotting a trip to the pub to watch England later today. We yell at the TV (OK, Amy does). And we’re watching the games with a critical eye (’cause, you know, coaching Under 10 soccer makes us experts in the Beautiful Game).

It also means that for Father’s Day, I scored the official FIFA World Cup trivia game.

Between matches, our family played the game on Sunday. Amy took our son and one of our daughters, and another daughter and I took up the challenge. Wow, was it difficult. I’m guessing that together we maybe answered 8 out of 50 questions correctly…and we were playing the easiest level! Here’s a sample:

“What innovation did the ball for the 1998 World Cup France present?”

Anyone?

If you guessed, “layers of foam rubber for more precision,” give yourself a round of applause.

Tough, right?

Anyhow, as I was looking through the game’s instructions and I noticed Tertullian:

Did you catch it?

Evidently, though this is a mixed gender game, the players that answer questions correctly will certainly be men. See the masculine pronoun?

Is it a typo? Sure. But, then again, perhaps the proofreader is revealing his/her bias in missing that one.

All I know is that, in our case, we bucked the trend. When all was said and done, when the trophy was awarded, the parent left standing was…

Not me.