It's Wheel Watching Time!

Every once in a while I feel the need to expand my life experiences. You know, the kind of experiences that you'll remember and cherish the rest of your life. For me some of those experiences have included my travels to places such as Scotland, Hawaii, France, and the Caribbean (soon to add Costa Rica). My years as a dancer and the many performances around the United States, para-sailing off the coast of Maryland on my honeymoon, graduating High School and College, my wedding day, and many more. Well, today I got to add another one of those experiences to my list of once in a lifetime activities...I tried out for Wheel of Fortune!

Well, it's more truthful to say that I stood in line with our friends Brian and Deborah, filled out an application, and waited with the scariest, craziest bunch of faithful Wheel Watchers I've ever seen for our names to be called/drawn at random for our chance to play a mini version of the game in front of the crowd and win fabulous prizes such as t-shirts and hats! I didn't actually want to be on Wheel of Fortune, I just wanted to be a bystander to the chaos.

So, we were crammed into a gymnasium where the air conditioning obviously didn't work while they blared country music to the highest degree of annoyance. We were looking at each other like the Wheel of Fortune people were so stupid, stereotyping Southerners like that. We thought that it was bad form, until we looked around and noticed that everyone else there was dancing in place and singing the songs word for word. I guess we were the stupid ones.

After waiting for about an hour inside, which felt more like 3 hours, they stopped the country music and blared the theme song. The whole crowd roared with excitement and anticipation. Would this be the big break they were waiting for? Suddenly the “Pat on the road” (Marty) and “Vanna on the road” (Heidi) ran on stage and the horrors began. They drew 5 names at a time and with each name they called I was thanking my lucky stars I wasn't one of them.

There were two women standing behind us who were so pissed off. Apparently they were getting all of the puzzles way before any of the contestants on stage and they needed to be the ones on stage! Why weren't their names called?! It wasn't fair!!! Boo-frickin'-hoo people!!! I can't describe all of the types of people that were there because that would take all night...but I think it's safe to say that we were the most normal.

The host was a cross between crazy Tom Cruise, Ryan Seacrest and speed...not necessarily in that order. He was so high strung and ballistic that we were afraid to make him angry. We're all convinced that he would slit our throats if we took a wrong step, or answered a question incorrectly. With all of his jumping and energy he also managed to sweat through his entire shirt. The “Vanna” of the show also scared me with her quirkiness and energy. She was so skinny that we have decided that she hates her job and herself, and the only way she can control her life is to control her eating. I'm sure she hates her body, too. We're also convinced that Marty and Heidi hate each other. They are so happy and friendly to each other on stage, they probably want to rip out each other's eyes in the travel bus.

So, even though our names weren't called, and we didn't win fabulous cash and prizes, we are better people for having this life-changing experience to cherish and take with us always.