Gym Class Hero

The physical education program in the Hamden Public school system was a series of peaks and valleys. The popularity of each activity rested on how much the activity made you sweat while participating. The less you sweat, the less likely it was to affect your appearance for your next class. Since so much of high school was based on looks, everyone tended to enjoy 6 weeks of badminton was followed by another 6 weeks of volleyball. Both of those were indoors and did not involve an arduous amount of moving around. The most popular was ice skating. Since our town’s public rink was on school property, the high school had access to it during the day. The awfulness of walking up all the football stadium steps to get there was canceled out by the fact that nobody had to get changed.

The worst activities included when the teachers gave into the cultural phenomenon that was Tae-Bo. I don’t care what popularity circle you are in, those videos made you a sweaty mess, and everyone in your next class could tell. Other less popular units included weight training, basketball and swimming. Our school had just gone through an extensive renovation period where we had a brand new swimming pool, and they were going to get their moneys worth.

I hated swimming, mostly because when I was younger I was terrified to go under water. I had always been in the lower groups until during one family trip to Texas I finally went tried it. Of course, that lead to a nasty case of Swimmer’s Ear, but that’s another story.

By the time high school started, I was an okay swimmer, not great, but I wasn’t going to die from drowning or fear. When I walked out to the pool area, the teacher came right over to me. I had missed the placement test because of Jewish holidays. There were two levels: advanced or beginner. Since both were already occupying the pool, I wasn’t tested; she just asked me which I would be more suited for.

I watched the advance class swim lap after full length lap and saw the beginner class flailing around in the shallow end, barely able to walk, playing with a beach ball. Some occasionally went underwater, but most didn’t.

What decision would you have made?

For the next four weeks I was back to my childhood swimming level. I gingerly entered the pool, playing up my former fears and feigned excitement over any minor advancement. I thought this was the best play I could have made – gym was never easier. Of course, when I told my mom, she chewed me out for taking the easy road. My argument of “high school swimming doesn’t matter” was countered with “first this, then what?” We had reached the stand off of gym class apathy against mother’s guilt. I decided not to bring it up until we switched sports. When that happened, I promised my mom I would give 100% effort during badminton.

Muddy with a Buddy

In the spring of 2007, my co-worker Ernest told me about a race called Muddy Buddy. The race consisted of two partners alternating between running and biking for a six mile course which was divided into five legs. At the end of each leg there was an obstacle and at the very end of the race was a very long mud pit that you had to crawl through.

It sounded fun, so we signed up as a team, complete with a terribly obscure name from Futurama – “Team Scooty Puff Jr”. It didn’t seem like a very hard task, plus with several months to prepare, it would be okay. As the days and weeks ticked by, there was very little training, unless you count riding the bike five blocks to my friend Parker’s house to drink beers.

The time flew by and suddenly, the event was a few days away. I packed my roommates bike on to the back of my car, picked up Ernest and we drove out to San Dimas. There was a huge turnout, some in fancy costumes and everyone ready to go.

Upon seeing the course, it was evident to us that somewhere along the registration process, we must have missed the part about needing a mountain bike. The course was full of off-road paths, steep hills, tree roots, and sand. We were going to try and tackle these obstacles with a thin tired city bike. We decided that I would do the bike first and Ernest would begin on foot. This would give me three biking legs, since I was the weaker of the two of us at running.

The race began and all the heavy duty bikers took the lead. I lagged behind a bit and tried to get a rhythm going. The first downhill portion took us on to a beach, through the actual water and back up an even steeper hill. The water was deep enough to make my socks wet, putting me in a pretty foul mood at the time. I parked the bike and tackled the first obstacle - three balance beams – and began on foot. A little while after I began chugging along, Ernest passed by me on the bike and took the lead into the second obstacle – the cargo nets. After the third obstacle – the wall climb – I began running what seemed to be the smoothest and most downhill portion of the course. It was just then when Ernest zoomed by on the pavement, barely even peddling on the bike. After beating the tall, inflatable slide there was one leg left. This was the most ridiculous leg – weaving in and out of trees, steep tight turns while going downhill and a crowded path at that. I ended up running the steepest hill while carrying the bike.

I threw the bike into the parking area and found Ernest. There was one piece left and we were prepared to conquer the famous Mud Pit. In order to make sure you were deep inside the mud, there was a net hanging over the entire thing and you had to get down to crawl through it. I was down to my chin and Ernest was up to his neck, covered in mud.

It felt great succeeding in this task, despite the lack of practical preparation. We both ended up throwing out our shoes and socks into the overflowing garbage can that was already filled by people who had the same idea. There was a small series of tents set up where people were handing out things like free socks and granola bars. After grabbing our samples and hosing off in a crowded outdoor area, we got back in the car and headed out for the spoils of war – pizza and beer.

Popular Jerks are Good at Basketball

I went to a Jewish sleep away camp for two summers. That is to say, the camp was about as Jewish as anyone who would mark the box marked Jewish on the SATs, but wouldn’t know a lulav from a bamboo shoot. The real emphasis on was sports. From the moment breakfast was over it was sports, swimming and more sports. The annual highlight was the 4-day long camp wide Olympiad, but aside from that, the day to day activities consisted of what the counselors thought would be entertaining.

One day they decided to have a basketball skills competition. It was easy to arrange this since the basketball court was located right outside our bunk. My friend Adam won the foul shooting contest, hitting nine out of ten. When it came time for the three point contest I inexplicably caught fire and managed to hit seven out of ten to win.

A few days later, the counselors organized a half court 2 on 2 tournament and participation was mandatory. Part of me looks back and thinks the counselors were doing things like this for their own amusement. There were clearly four boys who were the best at basketball and it was only a matter of time until they played in the finals - the other several rounds were just to delay the inevitable.

I always viewed my popularity at camp as somewhere in the middle management. Comfortable with my group of friends, more popular than some, and disliked the kids who were higher up on the food chain. Those kids were jerks, but when you're 13, and the jerks are popular, you still find yourself envying them. People might think that I only think these kids are jerks because I wasn't in their group, but that's not true, and I'll give you two examples.

One night I woke up and my face was burning hot. Someone in the jerk group had a small bottle of tabasco sauce and had put a few drops on my face while I slept. I ran to the sink to find two other campers flushing their faces in the sink with the same symptoms as me. That was the night I had won the three point contest, so the good feeling I had was washed right down the sink.

The two oldest boys groups, the "super-seniors" shared one large cabin split into two sides by age. The older guys were on the left, younger guys on the right and shower stalls and bathrooms connected the two. A rare night occured when all of the older boys climbed to the roof of the bunk to sit and talk. It was not a typical bonding session, but we had a good time. When the counselors told us to come down and go to bed, one of the jerks walked across the shower roof and began to urinate off the side. The stream went right onto a window sill that aligned with the top bunk of one of the younger boys.

As luck would have it, these popular jerks were the best at basketball.

I approached my friend Adam, said that we had a decent shot, having won the individual skills competitions. It never occured to me that both of these could have been gigantic flukes. My only thought was that if we teamed up, we could surprise some people.

Our first round opponents were a kid in Teva sandals and another kid nicknamed "Beef" for eating an inhuman amount of meat during one lunch session. As I have mentioned before, participation was not an option, and these were two kids would have probably passed on the tournament if there was a choice. In the second round we escaped by a slightly better team to make it to the semi finals.

The last four teams featured the two popular jerk teams, our team and one other surprise team. We were up against one of the high seeds. They handled us with ease at first, jumping up to a big lead before we even got on the board. The games were to 21, going by ones and it was a quick 7-1 lead for them. When the score reached 10-2, one of their players sat down on the court and let the other do all the work. They swapped out on occasion, but it was still embarassing and arrogant on their part. With the two on one advantage, we chipped at the lead and brought it back to a 15-9. It must have been too close, because the other kid got back up, seemingly bored and they proceeded to finish us off to the tune of 21-10.

I remember the feeling of anger build up in me watching them sit on the court and laughing at us. I fought off every urge to throw the basketball as I hard as I could at him, partly because I had only been in one fight before and partly because I thought he might just catch the ball. I don't remember is who won the tournament or the names of any of the jerks. I've even looked at the bunk picture from those two summers and could barely identify any of them. I hope that they took a lot of pride being the best basketball players in a southern Connecticut semi Jewish summer camp. As far as that can get you in life, if you live your life as a jerk, it's only a matter of time before you piss in the wrong persons window sill.

The Potter Lottery

Halfway through my 2005 Wheels trip there was a somewhat large event in the lives of the kids on the bus. The 6th book in the Harry Potter series would be released. It was a big deal for them - most of these kids weer 14 or 15 years old, which meant when the first book arrived in the states they were only 9 or 10. The most obsessed kids already had arranged for their parents to buy the book and overnight it to them on the trip at our next stop in Los Angeles. However we were in San Francisco for the weekend. Los Angeles was on Monday - an eternity away, considering the book came out on Friday.

By some stroke of luck there was a Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble in the plaza adjacent to our hotel and Saturday night I agreed to take any of them who desperately wanted to on a walk over to the stores. I told the eleven kids who came that there was almost certainly going to be no copies available - fans of the series had been waiting for this day for two years. Anyone who wanted to read it the night it came out would have reserved a copy ahead of time and there wasn't going to be random excess stock.

We walked to Wal-Mart first to find empty shelves and employees who laughed when I asked if they had any extra copies. Upon arriving at Barnes and Noble it looked something like the Filene's Basement wedding dress sale. It was definitely more people than I had ever seen in a book store at 10:30 pm on a Saturday night.


I approached the customer service counter with trepidation. I had already been laughed at once for asking if there were copies available. By some incredible dumb luck, the woman handed me three copies of the book that were left behind at the customer service desk. She said people had reserved the book at this location then later canceled because another store had a better release party. I asked the woman to please hold the books for me because I had eleven kids who were interested in buying them, now I just had to figure out who got to.


There was a brief thought of a trivia contest or some Potter related skills competition, but in the end we needed something quicker. I went back to the desk and procured a sheet of paper. I ripped it quickly into eleven pieces. On three of the pieces, I wrote "You can read!" and the remaining eight I wrote "Sucker!" Each piece was folded up and put into my hat. The Potter fans lined up and each picked a piece for the right to purchase this $30 book. Before anyone could open their paper, my friend Mordy, who had been visiting with our group for the weekend, switched his camera to video mode.





One of the kids jumped up and down even though he did not win. Another later revealed he had no interest in the book at all, he just wanted to see where everyone was going. Yet another defeated girl willed herself to purchase the audio book version, which was made up of 17 discs and clocked in at a monstrous 19 hours.


There were a few catches for the winners of the contest. Those who now had the book were not allowed to stay up for the entire Saturday night and finish it. The book was 672 pages long and we had a full day of San Francisco sight seeing the next day. It would be easy to tell if one of the kids had forgone sleep to be the first one finished.


The other stipulation was that whoever finished first was to turn the book over to me so I could read it next. It might have offset the first clause but I was willing to wait. As it turns out, one of the girls was finished before the drive to Los Angeles. I took my time and probably finished it in a weeks time, being lapped by several of my kids in the process.

Minnie's Case of the Madness

My former roommate Alicia was friends with a girl named Heather who in turn was roommates with another girl named Becca. Our two apartments were basically extentions of each other as we shared many similar interests and fun times together. No time was more fun than when the four of us teamed up to take on Minnie's Moonlit Madness.

Minnie's Moonlit Madness (or MMM for short, in order to preserve my dexterity) was a Disney company based competition that takes place every May on the hollowed ground of Disneyland. Only one of the team members needed to be a mouse house employee - Heather was our in, working in their DVD department. MMM combined a team's knowledge of trivia with the experience of a scavenger hunt inside the gates of the happiest place on earth.

Did I mention that all four team members were tethered together at all times using a rope? This added the unique challenge of being forced to stick close together. The only time people could unclip was for one of the designated restrooms or if a task required it. The bathrooms were monitored by a Disney employee. Any team caught unattached would be disqualified. The whole event was timed, which caused people to move at speeds that shouldn't be attempted while dragging three people with you. It was serious.

Anyone who knows me knows how much of a Disneyland maniac I am. I have read countless books on the park, I have the whole park soundtrack on my I-pod and went there at least a dozen times during my last full year living in southern California. Needless to say our team was excited for the competition - enough so to make matching team shirts with one of the "Lands" on the front. Heather was Frontier, Alicia was Adventure, Becca was Fantasy and I was Tomorrow.

In the pre-game application each team would choose the difficulty of their ten clues, ranging from hard to easy. Being novices, we opted for two or three hard and the rest were easy. The hard ones brought in more points, but well, they were also harder and we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

The Disney company closed the entire park at 6:00 for the event. We might have been at a disadvantage being from the Burbank offices, since many of the competitors were employees from the park. They would have the clear advantage of knowing more. Team captains signed in at the designated ticket booths and received their team packets. The envelopes contained team numbers, pens and pencils, a lanyard, a blank standardized testing bubble sheet, maps of every Disney park in the world and a flag of a foreign country. Our bib number was 216, which I thought was lucky, because at the time I had just started dating Lindy, and this was her Cleveland based area code.

Opening session took place in the Snow White theater. Minnie and a cast member explained the rules, followed by 50 rapid-fire multiple choice trivia questions ranging from theme parks to ESPN, basically anything that resided under the Disney company. Each question was only on the screen for a few seconds, so we tried writing down ones that we didn't know right away. A sample question: "Disneyland opened to the public on July 17, 1955. What day of the week was it?"

Disney voluntEARS (their pun, not mine) collected the answer sheets and all of the teams were instructed to head outside to Small World plaza. Each team was instructed to rope up as we were greeted by a video projection on to the front of It's a Small World. There was a long introduction which featured random clips of hundreds of Disney movies. The facade went dark and random International flags appeared on projected in various bubbles. We were given no instruction aside from "your first clue is at this location," just the flags. In front of each flag was a clue written in that country's native language. We had an Italian flag, so when I found that on the screen, I noticed two key words in our clue - "rosa" and "pizza". I didn't know what the other words meant, but I my context clues told me we should go to Red Rocket's Pizza Port, located in the center of Tomorrowland.

At this point it's important to mention there were nearly 300 groups, totalling 1200 people all jammed into one big Disney cul-de-sac. We attempted to navigate towards Tomorrowland, but there were at least 25 flags, so people were headed in every direction possible. Clusters of four were running into each other and getting tangled together. If another group was headed towards us I'd yell out which direction we'd take, in order to avoid a collision. When we made it, taped to the front of the restaurant door was a box with clues in it. We grabbed it and it had the answer, which we had to return to clue central, at the central hub of Main Street USA.

Each answer was only one word. These were figured out by completing a task or solving a complex puzzle. You wrote this word on an envelope and turned it in to clue headquarters to get the next clue. Some required you to venture into the park, others were mind puzzles you could sit down and do right there.

From there the night took off and everything was a blur. We darted all over the park, mostly in the Main Street/Fantasyland/Tomorrowland vacinity, never too far from the Matterhorn or Castle. Some of the more insanely detail oriented clues included:

• A musical clue where teams were given sheet music and access to a keyboard. Thankfully Becca retained enough of her childhood piano prowess. She played the notes and we had to identify the movie which the song belonged in and take one indicated letter of the movie title. After doing this ten times, we had to unscramble all of the letters. The whole thing felt like when Andie had to play the giant bone organ in Goonies.


• Walking up and down Main Street and looking at every single window display. Each display had a characters from a Disney movie with a book opened next to them. We had to read the paragraph on each book, answer a comprehension question and unscramble the clue from the fourth letter of each answer.


• One clue said go to "Where 13 is lucky." We went with our first hunch and high tailed it to the Haunted Mansion and there was nobody there but a very confused janitor. It turned out we needed to find the place on the map numbered 13, which was the Coca Cola pavillion.


• All of the International maps were used, including having to trace lines between landmarks located around EPCOT's lagoon. These lines would form certain letters which spelled our an answer. The clue only said "Italy, France, Mexico, Canada," which meant put your pen down at Italy, trace to France and so on. This one took us so long to figure out, the woman at the station practically gave us the correct method after we kept asking for hints.


• Another clue took us to the Mad Tea Party, better known as the Teacups. We had to dash from cup to cup (not easy to do while tied together) and read a trivia question about Alice in Wonderland. The questions were written in a spiral, so we had to keep rotating in order to read them.

In the end, only the top 3 teams got prizes, which ranged from a cruise to hotel stays to dinners. If you weren't one of the winning teams, your results wouldnt be released until a few weeks down the road. We were all very shocked to learn that our team had come in 23rd place, the highest finish ever from someone in Heather's department. To this day her co-workers still talk to her about it.

We returned to the Madness in 2007 and came in 34th (or something close to that). I blame the drop in rank on the fact that it took place across the way at Disneyland's less popular cousin, California Adventure, and the theme was High School Musical.

Get Back on Defense

When I was a kid I played games all the time. I tended to succeed most in the unorganized neighborhood games like kickball, whiffleball and freeze tag. I was damn good at freeze tag and in elementary school I ruled at kickball. I was one of only two kids to kick a ball over the fence, bouncing it off the roof of the house next door - but I am about five years ahead of myself. Real sports were just hobbies, but they became more official when I was signed up to play several actual sports in organized leagues. At age seven I joined Greater Hamden Baseball Association (GHBA) and Hamden Soccer.


From the start soccer didn't seem like a good fit. I never watched it on television or talked about it with my friends. For my birthday earlier that year I received a soccer ball and a soccer "activity set," which consisted of some different colored cones to set up as the goal. People assumed I loved soccer because if anything, I was always polite about receiving gifts. Sweaters, belts, things I already had - I reacted like it was the greatest, because it was for me. Maybe I should have opted for honesty with the soccer gifts. It soon became plainly obvious that I was not cut out to be a soccer player for one specific reason: the running.

Baseball was good for me because you could stand around in the field and wait for something to happen. I had a very active imagination and would completely zone out sometimes in left field. I would pick grass, throw my glove in the air and try to catch it, or pretend I was a big league pitcher during the down time.

There was no down time in soccer games. From whistle to whistle, the kids ran after the ball from one end of the field to the next. It was fun at first, but I quickly grew tired of the fruitless pursuit. I wasn't the fastest kid nor was I the best kicker. Somewhere in my head, I was the smartest, and I devised a plan. I would wait on one end of the field, it didn't matter which, and after all of the other players ran to the opposite end and back, I'd be the freshest runner. My aim wasn't to score a lot of goals or play excellent defense. I just wanted to kick the ball as hard as I could. It didn't matter if I kicked it only once per game, I wanted to wail on it and see how far it would go.

As smart as my idea was, it made for lousy home videos.

"Go after the ball!" my father would yell as I stood by myself, 20 yards away from anyone else.

"They're just coming back here anyway," I would say back, kicking up some clumps of grass.

I was either the smartest seven year old on the field or too lazy for soccer. You'd think that by conserving my energy so by the time the ball was back on my end I'd be the only one able to run full speed, but of course that never seemed to matter. Seven-year-old kids have insane amounts of energy, and the idea of any of them becoming winded in a twenty minute soccer game was idiotic. I only played soccer for one season.

After soccer ended, I followed in my sisters footsteps to various activities that she had tried and enjoyed. First came ice skating, but I was terrified to let go of the wall. Then came gymnastics, which I only really liked because there was a trampoline involved. I enjoyed baseball, but once went an entire 22 game season without getting a hit. When I hit a growth spurts in the fourth and fifth grades, I became the tallest kid on my JCC basketball team. Unfortunately, these growth spurts came at a time when I had not yet switched to boxer shorts. I also believed that there was some kind of aerodynamic advantage in playing in sweatpants. This resulted in me having to stop every ten seconds to pick my underwear out of my crack and there's plenty of video of that splendor.

What do I play now? Kickball. The same game I loved from the start. The same game I was great at during elementary school. I guess my journey as an athlete was more of a 18 year feeling out process that resulted with my gut instinct being the correct choice. Unless of course an adult recreational freeze tag league opens up anytime soon.

A Five Letter Word for Victory

Lingo was a game show I watched on occasion when I couldn't fall asleep. It certainly wasn't appointment television, or even something that I recorded to watch when I had the time. Contestants had five chances to guess a five letter word with only the first letter given to them. They were told when their letters were in the right spot, or if they had the right letter in the wrong spot. From there, the contestants had to rearrange the letters to reveal the mystery word. To me, the main aspect of the game was the result of mixing a word puzzle with the childhood game Mastermind, but it was then mixed with Bingo. With each correct word, you would have the chance to pull out a numbered bingo ball, in hopes of making a "Lingo". It seemed easy enough to play along at home, but I never thought about trying to be on the show.

One day I came across a craigslist ad looking for Lingo contestants. Usually these ads are the definition of sketchy, boasting "soon to be network shows" or "big money prizes". This was the first time I had seen a game that I had heard of, so I figured it was harmless to send over an e-mail.

I got a reply saying my partner and I could come in and audition next week. As excited as I was, I did not have a partner. This role needed to be filled by someone who had free time, good with words, and was not shy. My friend Matt had just been fired from our job, so clearly he had open availability and could use the extra money. He agreed to come audition and our team was formed.

The audition took place in a studio lot on Sunset Boulevard. They took us into an office building, to open corner of a random room with chairs set up and a dry erase board on an easel. Everyone took seats with their partner and began filling out various paperwork. Had you ever been convicted of a crime? Have you won money on a game show in the last 6 months? The two producers called each team up to hear a personal introduction and try a practice round of Lingo.
While the others took their turns, we had to think of something for Matt to say. It was amusing to say he recently unemployed theme park worker, but he opted for college student. I noticed most of the other teams had at least one actor who was trying to make some cash. Every time a contestant said they were an actor, a producer would stop tape and ask for something else. "People at home don't want to see actors on game shows," one of them said. "That is what sitcoms are for." Most of them settled on labeling themselves as bartenders or personal trainers. When it was our turn, I noticed Matt was a little camera shy, so I hammed it up more than I should have. For our practice round, we used all five guesses to get the word BLEED. Any word with a double letter is tricky - even if you guess the letter, it will only show up in one of the spaces, so it was tougher than expected. With that, the audition ended and we were sent on our way.

It was a while before I got a call. As it turned out, we were selected as the first alternates and a team had dropped out. We were needed to come film the following week, on Valentine's Day. The final detail we heard was that it was going to be a science fiction themed week and we were supposed to dress accordingly.

Matt and I began Lingo boot camp. I recorded every episode I could and we watched them all while we made our science fiction uniforms. These uniforms consisted of two pastel t-shirts we stamped with an atom and a rocket. We had put them together in less than an hour using $12 worth of supplies from an arts and crafts store.

On the day of our taping, we got to the studio in our home-made science fiction gear to find that we were horribly under dressed. There were two girls were wearing full Star Trek uniforms, complete with Spock ears. Another guy had a hat that looked like the planet Saturn. There were light sabers and ray guns. We were the more subtle side of science fiction.

We got into the same room the original audition took place in and sat down. There were seven teams there, six who would film that day and one as an alternate. A man who worked as a game show union fairness representative gave a speech. His job was to go from show to show and make sure contestants understood the rules and believed they got a fair chance. If a contestant felt at any time that we were being cheated we could talk to him after and possibly get a do-over. He made references to the old game show scandal on '21' and most of us just nodded approvingly to move the process forward.

All of the teams drew numbers from a bag to see who would play who, and in what order. I picked the number three, which meant we had to square off against the two female trekkies from the line. We'd also be the last game of the day. They whisked us to the actual studio where each team was isolated in their very own practice room. This was a small dressing room which had a couch, a chair, a bathroom, a table, a dry-erase board with marker and a television. There was also various snacks, a couple of bagels, some trail mix, cheese and crackers, pretzels, candy, water and soda. If we knew the length of time we'd be in there, we would have rationed it better.

We went right to the dry erase board, working out our strategy. The goal was to get all the vowels in play as fast as possible. We went over good four letter combination words to use. We tried words with at least 2-3 vowels every time, like AUDIO, DEALS, SOLAR, BOUTS and TEACH. The main trick was to not use words with repeating or duplicating letters.

We had spent three hours in the room and the food was long since finished. We were all practiced out; the dry-erase board now sat idle in the corner. The standard Springer-type morning television was terribly boring, aside from one car chase. Though we seemed out of options, we also figured that our opponents must be in a similar situation. At least the playing field would be even.

Suddenly our door opened and a lowly P.A. grabbed us and took us to visit the make-up department. Matt went in first as I argued with the wardrobe woman that I should wear my silver shirt unbuttoned over my hand made one. When I got to the chair, Matt's face looked as pale as a kabuki performer. I was worried. We had seen a previous team come out of there looking foolish, with their hair blown out in a wild rejected Jetsons style. One of the ladies said "Let's match the symbols on their shirts on their foreheads also!" We tried to talk them out of this idea, but they had the final say. It would have been fine, but the atomic symbols on our shirts seemed to be too difficult for these women to replicate. Their barely passable ovals looked more like cocktail hot dogs, but the make-up women thought they were fantastic. Looking ridiculous as ever, we were ready for our date with the game show gods.

The set was actually big despite not having a studio audience. I found that amusing, because when watching, I could always hear people laughing at Chuck Woolery's jokes. We became the yellow team and the girls were now the red team. Chuck came out, with rather orange looking skin. He didn't come over to talk to us until the second round when he was required to. Shandi, or however you spell it, came out wearing a tight, black leather outfit which was impossible to walk in. Some brilliant person in wardrobe must have told her it was related to science fiction. Chuck was fascinated by her outfit and repeatedly told her to stand up so "the viewers at home" could get the full picture. The duo had an unusual relationship. When one of them attempted banter, often the other would not respond at all, making it very awkward. Chuck kept making comments about her dress, at one point saying "You're dressed like you should be in one of the movies I rented this weekend." Matt and I looked at each other, not sure if he was saying she looked like a whore or was admitting to renting dominatrix pornography.

The rules were then explained to us by a man in a shiny purple robe who was holding a big green alien mask. I assumed he was dressed up because he would be on screen at some point, but he never actually made an appearance.

The game started, and we had to stare across the stage to this tiny camera in the wall to do introductions. It was nerve wracking, especially knowing there was a stand-by team waiting in the wings in case we stunk up the joint. We won the coin toss, so we went first, took immediate control and didn't let go until we had won. We nailed the first three words. With each correct guess, Chuck would say "reach in there and grab a couple of balls," while we tried our hardest to not giggle. We achieved a Lingo before the first commercial. When the break ended it was time to meet Chuck.

Our strategies proved to be very successful, but we also figured out that the science fiction theme wasn't just for the set. A majority of the words were related to the science fiction genre. The words used for the regular game were: ATOMS, DEMON, RISKY, STEEL, LOSER, CLAWS, PORCH, TOWER, BREED, ROCKS, OUTER, NERDY, and LASER.

The girls finished off the game by getting a few words in a row, but one of them was our own fault. They had guessed NERDS, which had every letter except the last one correct and had flustered them. I leaned over to Matt and whispered "nerdy." As soon as I said it, both of the girls jumped up with the same epiphany and yelled it out at the same time. It was a good thing we were so far ahead, or I would have been upset with their treachery.

As the game went on, the girls became more and more fed up with the fact they were losing. By the time they were able to pick Lingo balls in the second round, they had a noticeably sarcastic tone, knowing there was no way to come back from the deficit. The final score was 575-175. Chuck Woolery said "Some teams just dominate," as he continued to apologize to the girls for the beating we laid down on them.

The words from the bonus round were: FORCE, TITAN, BONES, DWARF, TREKS, EVADE, SPEAR, WHILE. We ran out of time before we could guess the ninth word, which turned out to be GRANT. We had eight chances to win the bonus money and went through almost all of them. By the time we were down to our last three picks, we figured out that mathematically there was no way to lose.

I was scolded by the wardrobe lady for wearing my button down shirt over the home made one. I had forgotten if she told me not to or to keep it on, so when I did, apparently I made the wrong choice. She made some kind of remark about slapping me around in her British accent.

Back in the dressing rooms, we both washed the make up off so fast that our skin hurt. There was no way we'd look that stupid in public, just on expanded cable television. On the way out, we noticed a box of Lingo t-shirts sitting in the hallway and I asked if I could have one for my Grandma. They told us that only the losing team gets to have t-shirts. I even offered them to deduct the price of the shirt from my winnings, but the assistant firmly stood by the ruling that only the losers got to have them. I immediately called my Grandma to tell her that I won, and my mom and dad and sister, but that's it. Everyone else I only told to watch when it was on. The episode aired in June of that year. Six weeks after the episode aired, a full five and a half months later, we each received our share of the $5,000. Not bad for one days work.