Whenever I win control of the remote in our house, if there’s a game show on TV, that’s what I’ll be watching. I like Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but my current favorite is Cash Cab. When we visit New York City again, I’ll be looking for Ben Bailey.
Sarah and I were watching a Cash Cab marathon one day when I asked, “How come it’s always the MAN who gets to be the one to give the answer?”
We started getting all feminist riled up about that, “Yeah! What’s that about?”
After a few episodes, we realized it wasn’t a gender thing. Whoever sat in the seat that was not directly behind the driver got to be the one who answered for the group. Most of the time, it was a man in that seat because men are chivalrous and let women and children get in the cab first. We felt a little stupid.
Then I started wondering, if the winners split the money evenly when they got out of the cab, or if they divided it according to how many correct answers each person gave? Who would I call for a mobile shout out? Could you choose based on the question?
It’s always interesting too, if they haven’t gotten kicked out of the cab, to see if the contestants will take the double or nothing gamble at the end of the cab ride. And, it's refreshing to see how polite New Yorkers are.
Years of watching game shows meant that I was fully prepared on one of the first sunny days of summer last year. John had played hooky from work and we went to eat lunch on Ruston Way, Tacoma’s waterfront.
Afterwards, we walked out onto the end of a pier to look out at the water. That’s when we spotted an old piling sticking up out of the water covered with coins, mostly pennies. John dug in his pocket, and I dug in my purse for pennies. We were tossing coins, trying to make them “stick” to the top of the 6” diameter piling, watching them bounce off or miss entirely and plunk into the Puget Sound, when a couple walked up to us and issued a challenge.
They were about the same age as we are, but not married. They were dating—long enough for the guy to feel comfortable launching passive aggressive barbs at his girlfriend and her supposed lack of intelligence.
Then he turned his spotlight on me, “I bet YOU can’t name the colleges in the Pac-10.”
I had no choice but to start naming them, from north to south along the west coast. Mr. Obnoxious held up fingers as I rattled them off. The girlfriend got more excited the more I named. At eight, I stalled. He started gloating.
John threw me a hint, “Our friends, Pat and Stephanie, moved to . . .”
"Got it! Arizona and Arizona State!”
Quiz guy was disappointed. His girlfriend high-fived me.
Then I turned to him and threw my gauntlet down, “OK, now you have to name ten designer handbags.”
His girlfriend beamed, “Yeah! Yeah! Name ten designers!”
He looked stunned, “Calvin Klein?” I held up one finger.
John looked at me, “What’s that one? The purse that you got for Sarah in China? Dooney & Bourke!”
“OK, that’s two.” The girlfriend was practically jumping up and down. We waited. They had bupkis.
Together, she and I came up with eight more. I was glad she knew because to tell the truth, I was bluffing just to watch him sweat. I buy my purses from Fred Meyer’s or Penneys.
We left that day, and I thought the Ruston Way game show was an isolated incident, until a couple of weeks ago.
Sarah and I were in downtown Tacoma to do some shopping. I was feeding coins into a machine to pay for parking. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man walk up. I thought he was waiting to buy a parking ticket too, but instead, he was running his own impromptu game show.
“I bet you can’t tell me who invented penicillin.”
Sarah looked around for a camera. Maybe we were on Jay Leno. I was trying to figure out how many minutes we’d get for a quarter, how long we were going to be, and how much change I had. Without turning around and looking at him, I answered, “Salk.”
“Wrong! But you were headed in the right direction. It was Alexander Fleming.”
Dang it! I pulled the ticket out of the machine. Salk cured polio (and NOT with penicillin either). All I saw of the random quiz master was his backpack as he walked off down the street. And, I’d bought 30 minutes more parking time than I needed. Dang it again!
So if you go to Tacoma, be prepared. As my teachers used to say, “make sure you take your thinking cap with you.”
Laura Keolanui Stark is hoping she’ll make it to the bonus round. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com. (The Pac-10 consisted of: Washington State University, University of Washington, University of Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, California, UCLA, USC, Arizona, Arizona State.)
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