jeopardy

someone I knew was on jeopardy last week, a woman I went to high school with and am in FB contact with only.

Anyway, it reminded me of the time I tried out for Jeopardy and I thought I would share it.

It was 1994. I was 23 and recuperating from a bad illness. i couldn't do much but lie in bed or watch TV and I watched Jeopardy religiously. One night we saw that they were having tryouts in Atlantic City. My mother in law(or my boyfriend's mom at the time) loves AC. So we decided to take a trip down with her and I would try out.

I forget which casino the first test was in but we had to go through a maze of slot machines to a small conference room. Some guy explained that we would have, I think five minutes to take a ten question quiz. You had to get 7 of the ten right to move on. I sat down and got 6 almost right away. I didn't know the name of the "famous milanese opera house" (what is La Scala?) and I had another iffy answer, time was running out but at the last minute I looked at "rocky island" and for some reason 'bikini atoll' popped into my head. I almost shouted "Atoll! Atoll!" but wrote it down. They said to wait and listen if our name was announced and come back if it was in ten minutes or something like that.

We were playing slots when what do you know- they called my name. It was very exciting. They gave me a sheet of paper and told me to come back in a month for round two.

For round two my future mother in law drove me down. I was actually still pretty weak and couldn't handle a long drive. I crocheted the whole down, working on what became a queen sized blanket. I still think of it as my sick blanket. I just sat and watched tv and crocheted that blanket over me the whole winter.

At the start of Round Two there were about 80 people. We sat at long conference tables, 6 footers, two or three to a table. One woman came in late and seemed really fussy about where she would sit. This time there were 50 questions. They came up on a TV screen and we were told that they were all 800 or 1000 questions from previous shows. You would only have 30 seconds to answer before the next question came up. It didn't have to be in the form of a question. It was hard. Again, I remember the answers I knew I didn't know- a sphygnomanometer measures this( what is blood pressure?) and he composed Peer Gynt (who is Grieg?). I was sure I bombed.

They vanished for a bit and when they came back they said "If we say your name, congratulations, you passed." they start reading names, I'm getting ready to tell my mother in law i failed and not feeling too terribly disappointed when I hear my name. I was so surprised I said "Really?" Somebody laughed and the guy reading the names said "Yes, really." After they finished reading the list they said, "If we haven't said your name, I'm sorry but you won't be advancing. We don't share the scores of the tests so if your friends ask how you did you can tell them you just missed by a point." I'd say half to maybe two thirds of the people in the room didn't pass the test. Those of us who were left had to move to the front and fill in the empty seats.

I wound up sitting next to the woman who had come in late. We had a few minutes and she starts chatting with me about her doggie day care business and how she thinks this will get her on the show and she motions for me to come closer so she can show me some article she brought and I realize that she has been drinking. Now this thing started at 10 in the morning and she reeked. I'm looking around the room wondering "does anyone else know?" and also, "how the hell did she get through this test" I also noticed that I was the youngest person in the room by at least 15 years(I thought at the time, 15 years ago, HA). We had to introduce ourselves, say what we did, why we were hear. As the people were talking the list of occupations sounded like this "teacher, lawyer, lawyer, doctor, teacher, librarian, lawyer, teacher, teacher.." you get it. maybe with the occasional engineer. Then they get to me and I say "Hi, I'm a 23 year old waitress but not actually working right now. maybe I'll go back to college some day. I just thought it would be fun to see how well i could do." Oh, I forgot to mention that I had been on prednisone for about six months at this point so a lot of my hair had fallen out and my face was really puffy, so I can't even imagine what some people were thinking as I got up to give my spiel.

Then dog lady gets up and she was not exaclty incoherent but the guy asked her to repeat something she said and she started, I don't know how to explain it, speaking as loudly as someone could without shouting. and she was sort of waving her article around as she did it. I'm trying not to laugh, not because of what she was saying but because she was drunk and nobody knew it. and at the absurdity of the two of us among all the doctorlawyerteacher's there. I started thinking of us as the token fuck ups and because I was also nervous and excited I spent the rest of the introduction time trying not to laugh.

Now, it's time for the practice round and they explain that on real Jeopardy if you ring in before Alex finishes reading the question your buzzer is frozen for 10 seconds. The guy said some other stuff but I was still trying not to lose it. Especially when I realize that my new friend and I are going to be in the same group of three for mock jeopardy.

Let me tell you, playing for real instead of just on TV is really hard. Especially with two other people who you know are just as smart and probably smarter than you are. My group goes up to play and dog lady is clicking like crazy and arguing with the guy about not calling on her. I'm trying not to laugh. She answers a question "Texas" and he says "I'm sorry but..." and she says "It's texas. I know the answer is Texas. I was there last summer" and he says 'Remeber this is jeopardy.." she argues for another minute and finally he says 'it has to be in the form of a question." I knew I was out of it at this point and was fine with it. When the group before me came back from their turn, the lawyer had said "That was fun" but he didn't look like he meant it. I didn't think it was fun at all.

so, needless to say, I didn't make it on to Jeopardy which was fine. I know if I tried out again I could make it to the practice round again but the idea of being on TV and trying to keep my cool freaks me out. and I don't look good on camera. I think it was the knowing I was smart enough part that interested me, not the winning or TV part.