We decided we should recruit a third person to be on our team. After considering a few of our close friends for inclusion, we thought we should instead try to find someone who would bring the maximum amount of weirdness to our team.

We had a longtime friend named Bob who had started hanging out with a guy he worked with at Target whose name was also Bob. We had only recently met the other Bob, but we liked him a lot. We called him BobBob, to prevent confusing him with Bob.

“Bob has to work today,” I told Barrett, “but I could call him and get BobBob’s number.” Barrett was so thrilled with this idea that he told me he would probably lose interest in the whole idea of taking part in the scavenger hunt if we couldn’t get BobBob on our team.

My call to BobBob went something like this: “Hey, BobBob, it’s Paul. You know, Bob’s friend. I need you to meet me at Champ’s bar in Superior. We are going to have a shot of Jagermeister together, and after that I will reveal the next part of the plan.”

“I can be there in six minutes,” BobBob replied.

BobBob was thrilled to be included in the scavenger hunt, and even convinced us to cheat. Since he worked at Target, he immediately knew that several things on the list were in the store. All we needed to do was make Target our last stop and buy those things, then he would return them at a later date.

We were certain that we had won the scavenger hunt, but when the points were totaled up, it was clear that we had given the most hilarious performance and come in last place.

Seven or eight years later, Barrett and I entered another scavenger hunt. This time we chose our friend Maria and her mom to be on our team. We were sure the whole time that we were going to end up in last place.

When the points were added up, we nearly doubled the total of the second place team. I think we won a hundred dollars. In retrospect, coming in first place and coming in last place were equally fun. I’m glad we never placed in the middle.