My group of social misfits meets often to solve the world’s problems.

As the world’s brain trust, we’re capable of developing ideas that might end the war in Ukraine. We might devise a plan to mitigate the increasing frequency of extreme weather. The options are truly endless.

Having said that, our most recent meeting of the minds was a limerick writin’ contest.

We broke into teams to devise the limerick that would take home the coveted prize: an Amazon gift card, which, if you ask Nobel Laureate Bjornstjerne Bjornson, would probably be preferable to a gold medal. He could have used the gift card to get a Flowbee.

My group went to work. Loyal Scaiaholics will recall I’m nothing if not an eloquent poet, so I felt like I was in my wheelhouse.

We went through several drafts. One of my teammates is active politically and was pitching limericks that involved Donald Trump.

“Let’s not make limericks political, man!” I exclaimed, concerned the judges’ panel [which was, technically, all of us voting on each other’s poems] would overlook a limerick with a political theme.

“It’s not as though anyone else had written a poem about politics before!” I continued. “It’s not like they’d put a political poem on something like the Statue of Liberty!”

We kept working. The party was getting rowdy. At one point, we were looking for a synonym for “surge” that would rhyme with “freak”. We thought about getting out our phones to find just the right word.

“Did Shakespeare google for synonyms?!” one of my teammates asked.

It was around this time one of the librarians came into the room and said she was shutting the door.

“It’s just kind of loud in here,” she said in that non-confrontational but still matter-of-fact voice librarians have.

We didn’t win. For some reason, though, I still came out of this summit with an Amazon gift card, so even certified geniuses are not too good for participation trophies.

If that librarian had been alive in the 16th century, though, Shakespeare wouldn’t have written sonnet one.