In and On Jeopardy
You become a parent long before you have a child. I have done more than my share of chronic parenting, with damaged animals, men, friends and complete strangers. I wasn’t even especially hellbent on being a mother, especially a single mother, but when my sister got picked to be on Jeopardy, I discovered just how much my mother-leakage was beyond my ability to stanch and cauterize. Truth be told, I was a parent before I really knew I wanted a child.
Little Sister or LS, lives in CT with her husband and four daughters, who blow me away consistently with how unbelievably awesome they are. My nieces were the first truly unconditional loves of my life, because from the moment I laid eyes on each of them, I had no choice but to love them without question for the rest of my days. My nephews fall into this category as well, but they came well along after my first two nieces, who hooked me into the whole 'babies create immense love, duty, family and belonging' concept. Despite how much I love my sisters and their offspring, I still wasn't one of those "I gots to get me a baby!" kind of women, which is probably why I became a mother only after my lady parts quit the scene.
Back to Jeopardy, the game show (as opposed to the quality of endangerment). LS, a Ph.d. in clinical psychology, who defended her thesis between baby one and baby two- was already impressive to me. She married her college boyfriend, went on to graduate and then post graduate school and had her first child while her husband was in law school. Not one of these things ever occurred to me at all. A real education with 3 degrees aimed at helping others. Married by 25. To an actual person. Baby before 30. "What?" and "Why?" was all I could think as my beloved LS just went about amassing degrees and having kids. She had a plan, and it was called a life. I had no plan, hence no life.
She was too busy raising her four delicious daughters to actually therapize anyone else. But people needing therapy sorely need people like my LS because if how she raised her four divine girls is any proof of her abilities, she could heal the world. Not only that, but since she is also a major musical theater fag like all the rest of us in the family she routinely kicks ass at Jeopardy. Her daughters convinced her to audition. The bummer was when she got on. Jeopardy (the game show) films in Los Angeles.
LS is many things. A flier is not one of them. She regularly drives thousands of miles to avoid having any part of herself leave the ground. We have all tried everything to get her to fly, to no avail. And the irony of being a clinical psychologist who is terrified of flying is not lost on her.
When it became clear to the whole family that LS was not going to go on Jeopardy unless she could be live-feeded (fed?) from from her couch in Ridgefield CT, and we kinda figured Alex Trebeck wouldn't go for that, someone came up with a crazy solution.
As I was the only un-encumbered person in the family which means I didn't have a child or husband, or a real job, or a life, it was cooked up that I would fly to New York, get to Ridgefield, pack up LS and fly her back to Los Angeles and get her to Jeopardy then force her to fly back home. Yes, we were traveling first class, but to a deeply phobic person first class is still on an airplane, which has a nasty habit of flying around 30,000 feet above LS's comfort zone.
I found someone to care for my damaged but hanging-in-there cat. Flying to NYC first class was great fun, except that while waiting to board, an older man tried to chat me up. His best way of impressing me while bragging that he was in Los Angeles for 'show biz meetings' was to gently put down my actual writing job, which while at Disney, is show biz speak for 'sweat shop pay scale'.
I was happy to pre-board with the other first class passengers, if only to get a break from this man and his need to impress someone, anyone at all. I tried to bury my face in my People, but managed to look up and see my unwanted friend squeeze his down coat past me and sit in coach. I felt awful for him, when in fact he truly deserved the cosmic slap. The flight and ride to Ridgefield was jaunty. I was happy to see my family, if only for a few hours and had a host of fun ideas for LS and me to make the flight pass easily.
By the time I got to Ridgefield, LS was white knuckled and barely able to speak. My cargo pants full of fun ideas melted in the face of primal animal fear. But LS's strength, her daughters, was also her weakness. She worked and still endeavors, to not have her girls witness her fear. She doesn't want her phobia to influence her girls' life choices. So, as long as we never left her alone, I figured we, as a group, were going to get her on that damn plane. If only all of us could have flown with her, in a big unrelenting group hug, it might have worked. We got her packed and her bags in the car. The hard part was her good bye to her girls. She sobbed and hugged her girls as if I was going to air drop her over Afghanistan.
I faltered. Why put her through this, drag her onto a plane, for a game show hosted by an arrogant Canadian? But her daughters wouldn't hear of it. They wanted to root for their mom on TV. LS was sweating, pale, weeping and shaking, but she walked out to the waiting Town Car and got in. On the eternal ride to JFK, I tried to woo her with candy from our childhood that I had hunted down. She just looked through me, then peered back out the window, as if I was the Death Row nun walking her to her noose. What do you say to pure fear? Nothing as I recall. You can't feed fear, either. Fear might seem to have an appetite, but it really doesn't.
We are not an affectionate family. Sure, we hug, but not tightly. We kiss, but lightly and on the cheek. We say "love you" and leave off the far too intimate"I". I tried to hold LS's hand and while it felt wrong, the only part that felt worse was her letting me. She endured my hand in hers the way she was enduring her anxiety- by surrendering to the horror of her fate. I let her hand go. It seemed the less cruel thing to do, since I couldn't promise her we weren't about to crash and die.
We made it through bag check, security and waited to board, quietly for our plane. I snuck off and bought every cheesy gossip rag I could find, in the hopes that chuckling at the personal or professional demise of random unworthy celebrities would give LS's fear a bit of a holiday. It didn't work. She steeled herself and contained herself, as if trying to keep me from catching her infection of grief and anxiety.
Once on the plane the attendant offered us endless glasses of lovely California wine. Since I was ragged, drained and worn from dragging poor LS to her fate (and couldn't help but wonder- what IF we really actually do crash?! Good thing I'd be dead or I'd never forgive myself for killing my sister) I guiltily drank heartily. I begged LS to drink with me, but she refused. I offered her Xanax, Ambien but she had her own pills and refused to take them. I wondered if it would be rude to take one of her relaxants and decided it would. The plane barely heaved during take off, but LS felt every gear shift and and exhale from the cockpit. She grabbed my hand and squeezed as hard as she could. This is a woman who gave birth four times. She knows how to squeeze a hand. I drank with my free hand.
I offered to test her with Jeopardy questions. No. Fun candy from our childhood? No. Warm wet washcloth to gives oneself a whore's bath at one's first class seat? No. More wine? Not for her. More for me.
To take her mind off death, I opened People and searched for a story that I might read aloud to amuse her. To my horror I opened People precisely and accidentally to a story about famous people who pretended to serve in Viet Nam. And there was our father. In the story. Now I was nauseous, from eating fun candy from my unfun childhood, drinking by myself, pretending that LS's fear was just a simple feeling, and the realization that our famous but messed up dad's messings were famous too. Suddenly, in the emotional playpen that being suspended in air in a long metal humming iron lung, with 300 other lives in limbo caught up with me. And while we didn't crash, I did. The failings of other people, even the randomly famous, suddenly filled me with deep whirlpools of woe. So I continued to drink, knowing that LS wouldn't approve. At least me drinking would take a fraction of her mind off of her imminent tragic demise.
After five interminable hours of lovely first class that I was hard-pressed to enjoy due to the window seat full of agony to my left, we landed artfully and subtly. LS turned to me, "That was so fucking turbulent!" It wasn't. We never felt like we left the ground, but I just nodded. At least we were on the ground and I would get my now numb left hand back. The color only returned to LS's face once we left the plane. What I didn't realize until later was that LS was already scheming how best to get back home to CT without ever stepping foot back in LAX.
Our other sister greeted us, excitedly at LAX. LS had nothing good to say about the flight- actually she had nothing good to say, period. Older sister, or OS, cheerfully reminded us that we made it there alive, as if that was 99% of why people fly- to not die.
OS had lots of fun plans for Pre-Jeopardy make overs for LS. And that's what we did. Eyebrow shaping at Anastasia, clothes shopping at The Grove, Burke Williams for facials, massages, and Jacuzzis. But not once did it occur to us to watch Jeopardy. Perhaps if we had we would have known what we were to be exposing poor little LS to.
We drove onto the Studio Lot and were separated from LS- who went off to join the other chosen few, the brave and happy contestants. We sat in the studio audience, which was the approximate temperature of a meat freezer. I stared at the Jeopardy stage and became paralyzed with fear. This was awful. This was cruel. This Jeopardy Game Show stage was designed to intimidate even the most sober and confident trivia buff.
The big light up subject board was a good 50 to 70 feet from the Contestant podia. So, since everyone watches every single episode of Jeopardy on TV, the second you are on a massive stage built from ice and steel and the big light up board is 800 feet away and the buzzer is the size of a hummingbird's eye- you are designed to look stupid next to Alex Trebeck, who has all the answers on cue cards but acts like he knew it anyway. Aside from those three areas, the rest of the stage was plunged into gloomy blackness.
Alex's podium was between the subject board and the contestants, and we learned, among many other horrible facts, that if a contestant hits their buzzer before Alex finishes reading aloud the question, that if you are even remotely intelligent, you can read in more than half that time, if you buzz before he finishes speaking, you get locked out of being able to answer. No wonder Jeopardy seems so easy when one is lolling on their couch or in their bed- it's all so close and warm and safe on TV. Of course everyone thinks they have what it takes, because when one is eating ice cream in their pajamas they think they can do anything. And they can't. It's designed against you in person but shot and edited to make you feel smarter at home. Devious game show trickery.
They tape about 5 shows in a day. Which means, yes- Alex Fucking Trebeck works one whole day a week. He can kiss my Long Island Ass. I've never hated a game show host more. And I know it's not his fault, but I need a good scapegoat and he'll do. The rest of the day was sheer and utter hell.
LS was picked via some strange, unholy lottery to go in the 4th or 5th taping. We in the studio audience were expected to watch all the games taped that day. We soon realized that LS and all the other hopefuls were going up against some young, chipper, eager and paper-white Mormon who was on an eleven game gosh darn winning streak that must of had Joseph Smith tap dancing in his grave. Oh wait, Mormons don't dance. But they sure know how to hit a goldarn buzzer.
I was wracked with fear and loathing. After all I put my poor, sweet LS through to drag her here, and have a Persian woman spray paint eyebrows on her forehead, all just to compete against Ken Jennings, the winningest slice of Wonder Bread in Jeopardy history. Of course this dude is good at Jeopardy- he's never had alcohol or Diet Coke, so his memory is that of a 14 year old who reads nothing but Encyclopedias all day long. For fun. Not only that, but he had 11 other chances to master the far away board, to understand how to wait for Trebeck to finish his question and he knew how to ring that god damn bell. And the cold and the dark of the stage held no fear for him. He was invincible. It was excruciating.
I sat in the audience the way LS sat in the plane. Completely horrified and utterly terrified about basic human survival. I turned to OS and said, "We are dragged our sister out here, I tortured her on a five hour flight and now we sit here and watch her get thrown to the Mormon Lion?" It's a televised public spanking. It's being caned in public, with hair and make up. It's barbary dressed up as daytime TV. I fully became my sister's mother at this point- aching for her hardship, fighting the urge to run up on the stage and pull her away, freeing her from the heedless bloodshed of trivia jousting.
To her credit LS gave it her best. She even beat Ken Jennings in the Final Jeopardy question but he had amassed more funds in previous rounds and, just like a Utahan bet cautiously, so even in losing, he still came out ahead. I will never forget the final question wherein LS cleaned his already Swiss-clean clock.
"The Shakespearean Romance characters whose names are also used in the International Civil Aviation Organization's Alphabet." Ken said something stupid like Othello. Third Place Guy who had walked around all day with a Bic pen he held like a buzzer (or like Bob Dole) said something like "Smokey The Bear". But LS knew. "Who are Romeo and Juliet?"
This final question combined her vast love of theater and her deep hatred of all things Aviational. Even as my heart broke, I was proud of her. Just like a mother. And it sucked. I hated not being able to save her and protect her. But it was her shot. It was her Jeopardy, her preferred form of putting herself in harm's way. And it was hers to win or lose. I might have preferred a turbulent plane ride, but I couldn't use my fear to erase hers. I had to sit back and let her be in and on Jeopardy. I had to watch her lose and then I had to force her back on the plane to take her home to her waiting and proud family.
Driving home, trying to erase the image of LS's sobbing face as she walked alone to her gate and her imagined but still painful demise, I finally understood why Hockey Moms run onto the ice to attack mean players, why Stage Moms exist and what having no boundaries feels like. As a parent, you can't take away their pain, you can't make them pass the test, nor can you make their team win. You just sit on the sidelines with a grim smile and crushed juice boxes.
A smart mother recently said to me, "Prepare your children for the path, not the path for your children."
No wonder it took me another ten years to become a mother.
