Sunday, October 30, 2005
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
Last night I watched our version of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire" and lo and behold, in the middle, being questioned before the eyes of the entire nation, sat a girl - a girl I went to high school with from 7th all the way through 12th grade.
If you read the very first entry of my blog, you will come across the sentence "I didn't realize that I was feeling "weird" about her, until one day she sat down on my lap, in a very innocent friendship-like way, and this feeling shot through me from where her body touched my thighs all the way into my stomach, and from there a bit farther southwards, making me dizzy and, above all, rather confused. I pushed her off my lap, and that was that."
What a coincidence.
Anyway. I heard that she was going to be on from my mother, who called me the evening before. Apparently she made it to the middle on Friday already, and time ran out. So I called my best friend K (we all went to high school together), and while she was sweating over the questions, K and I were watching her, talking shit to each other over the phone.
I wonder how many of us who went to high school together coincidentally caught her on TV that night and started talking crap to other leftover friends who knew her too.
I guess that's one of the reasons I would never want to be on a popular show like that, cause holy shit, what if someone I know watches and I make an ass out of myself on national TV.
The thing is, you see, I was really curious about seeing her, because she has been a straight-A student throughout all these years, and out of all of us, if anybody would have made it in the world of highly academical brains and won the Nobel prize for the cure of cancer or AIDS, then it would have been her. She went from dumbo-eared extreme nerd who nobody would talk to or would want to be seen with to extremely popular all-sweetheart and show-off friend, who was invited to all the in-parties, when she changed her approach and started to let people copy her homework, and when she would help them cheat during tests - while always insuring her unchallenged superior status by letting the rest of us (and especially me) feel our own intellectual shortcomings with malicious little comments softened by a sweet all-encompassing smile.
Always having been part of the rather unpopular groups myself, I started to intensely dislike her the more she thought she was something better than we were due to her popularity. She started to shed her "nerd friends" like a young swan would shed its black feathers when it grows up, and when we all graduated I lost contact with her the second the gates of school closed behind me forever.
By way of hearsay I later learned that - instead of Medical University or Law School, which her mother would so have loved to see her in - she decided to pursue the career of "rhythmic instructor" for kindergarten kids, in other words: she teaches pre-schoolers how to clap their hands rhythmically, or play simple percussion instruments.
As far from any sort of scientific glamourous brainiac career as it can be, huh? Needless to say, her choice of career made many of us giggle in malicious glee, especially while thinking of her mother, whose every action seemed to have been driven by prestige and dreams of her famous and renowned brainiac daughter, and who seemed to define her own value through her daughter's high school grades.
Now, to take this a bit further, I have always wondered what came of the others I went to high school with. How much would they have changed, what would they do for a living, where and how would they live. Don't get me wrong, this thought is not ever present, but when it pops up, I always see all these popular kids with my mental eye, rich and famous and well off every one of them, having led a life nothing short of exciting ever since high school ended. In comparison to these concotions of my mind, I always feel insufficient, boring, and boorish. Nevermind the fact that I have spent 3 1/2 very excíting years in the US.
Back to the show. With K on the phone, our old friend walks up on stage together with the show host, and sits down. The camera zooms in on her face, and a first hint of relief starts to faintly enter my brain. Change? Not in her, for sure. The same hairstyle, the same style of clothing. If anything she looks extremely burgeois, conventional, boring. Exciting life ever since high school ended? At least not judging from her appearance.
Then she started to talk. I can tell she is very nervous, but I guess it would be weird if she weren't. The show host announces to the nation that she teaches little children how to clap their hands, she smiles, shrugs, agrees. I grin. How much better does "graphic designer" sound? Still I am thinking she will probably win the million. Knowing her and her endless fountain of general knowledge, she would totally make the million, without having used a single one of her jokers. She would probably just laugh at the simplicity of the questions, and wheeze through them, walking out a wealthy woman, leaving K and I insanely jealous and feeling unworthy and insufficient all over again, time magically turned back a good 8 years.
Let's just say that she used her 50/50 joker at the question that would push her up to 10000 €, and even though she used up both of her leftover jokers for the next question, 10000 is all she walked out with, visibly disappointed.
The question, you may wonder? What does RADAR stand for. Radio Detection and... reading? Ranging? Recycling? Realizing?
A question that couldn't be any more in the field of "general knowledge" that she always was so proud of being the unquestioned master of.
K and I had a really good laugh at her cluelessness, and her disappointed look. Ms. Knows-It-All, publically put in place on national TV.
And me? Some sort of "pressure of comparison" suddenly magically disappeared off my shoulders. The question of "how do I compare" suddenly seems ridiculous cause, holy shit, if my "nemesis" sucks big donkey balls on national TV, teaches pre-schoolers to rhythmically clap their hands, recently relocated to a little cow village outside of Vienna, and still wears the same clothes and hair she did 8 years ago - I don't think I fared too bad in comparison.
I studied on University. Went to Los Angeles to go to college. Played in a rock band and was interviewed several times, with a certain small degree of popularity in our circles. I came back with a Latino Fiancé. My English is better than that of all my old mates combined. If you compare a high school photo of mine with a current one, it's like looking at two entirely different people. I have a job through which my graphics are displayed in store windows all over the nation.
Was I ever even worried about going to my 10 year reunion?
The answer was ranging, btw. I knew that. And not, as you may think, because I spent such a long time in an English speaking country. I knew it because, dude, it's called general knowledge!
If you read the very first entry of my blog, you will come across the sentence "I didn't realize that I was feeling "weird" about her, until one day she sat down on my lap, in a very innocent friendship-like way, and this feeling shot through me from where her body touched my thighs all the way into my stomach, and from there a bit farther southwards, making me dizzy and, above all, rather confused. I pushed her off my lap, and that was that."
What a coincidence.
Anyway. I heard that she was going to be on from my mother, who called me the evening before. Apparently she made it to the middle on Friday already, and time ran out. So I called my best friend K (we all went to high school together), and while she was sweating over the questions, K and I were watching her, talking shit to each other over the phone.
I wonder how many of us who went to high school together coincidentally caught her on TV that night and started talking crap to other leftover friends who knew her too.
I guess that's one of the reasons I would never want to be on a popular show like that, cause holy shit, what if someone I know watches and I make an ass out of myself on national TV.
The thing is, you see, I was really curious about seeing her, because she has been a straight-A student throughout all these years, and out of all of us, if anybody would have made it in the world of highly academical brains and won the Nobel prize for the cure of cancer or AIDS, then it would have been her. She went from dumbo-eared extreme nerd who nobody would talk to or would want to be seen with to extremely popular all-sweetheart and show-off friend, who was invited to all the in-parties, when she changed her approach and started to let people copy her homework, and when she would help them cheat during tests - while always insuring her unchallenged superior status by letting the rest of us (and especially me) feel our own intellectual shortcomings with malicious little comments softened by a sweet all-encompassing smile.
Always having been part of the rather unpopular groups myself, I started to intensely dislike her the more she thought she was something better than we were due to her popularity. She started to shed her "nerd friends" like a young swan would shed its black feathers when it grows up, and when we all graduated I lost contact with her the second the gates of school closed behind me forever.
By way of hearsay I later learned that - instead of Medical University or Law School, which her mother would so have loved to see her in - she decided to pursue the career of "rhythmic instructor" for kindergarten kids, in other words: she teaches pre-schoolers how to clap their hands rhythmically, or play simple percussion instruments.
As far from any sort of scientific glamourous brainiac career as it can be, huh? Needless to say, her choice of career made many of us giggle in malicious glee, especially while thinking of her mother, whose every action seemed to have been driven by prestige and dreams of her famous and renowned brainiac daughter, and who seemed to define her own value through her daughter's high school grades.
Now, to take this a bit further, I have always wondered what came of the others I went to high school with. How much would they have changed, what would they do for a living, where and how would they live. Don't get me wrong, this thought is not ever present, but when it pops up, I always see all these popular kids with my mental eye, rich and famous and well off every one of them, having led a life nothing short of exciting ever since high school ended. In comparison to these concotions of my mind, I always feel insufficient, boring, and boorish. Nevermind the fact that I have spent 3 1/2 very excíting years in the US.
Back to the show. With K on the phone, our old friend walks up on stage together with the show host, and sits down. The camera zooms in on her face, and a first hint of relief starts to faintly enter my brain. Change? Not in her, for sure. The same hairstyle, the same style of clothing. If anything she looks extremely burgeois, conventional, boring. Exciting life ever since high school ended? At least not judging from her appearance.
Then she started to talk. I can tell she is very nervous, but I guess it would be weird if she weren't. The show host announces to the nation that she teaches little children how to clap their hands, she smiles, shrugs, agrees. I grin. How much better does "graphic designer" sound? Still I am thinking she will probably win the million. Knowing her and her endless fountain of general knowledge, she would totally make the million, without having used a single one of her jokers. She would probably just laugh at the simplicity of the questions, and wheeze through them, walking out a wealthy woman, leaving K and I insanely jealous and feeling unworthy and insufficient all over again, time magically turned back a good 8 years.
Let's just say that she used her 50/50 joker at the question that would push her up to 10000 €, and even though she used up both of her leftover jokers for the next question, 10000 is all she walked out with, visibly disappointed.
The question, you may wonder? What does RADAR stand for. Radio Detection and... reading? Ranging? Recycling? Realizing?
A question that couldn't be any more in the field of "general knowledge" that she always was so proud of being the unquestioned master of.
K and I had a really good laugh at her cluelessness, and her disappointed look. Ms. Knows-It-All, publically put in place on national TV.
And me? Some sort of "pressure of comparison" suddenly magically disappeared off my shoulders. The question of "how do I compare" suddenly seems ridiculous cause, holy shit, if my "nemesis" sucks big donkey balls on national TV, teaches pre-schoolers to rhythmically clap their hands, recently relocated to a little cow village outside of Vienna, and still wears the same clothes and hair she did 8 years ago - I don't think I fared too bad in comparison.
I studied on University. Went to Los Angeles to go to college. Played in a rock band and was interviewed several times, with a certain small degree of popularity in our circles. I came back with a Latino Fiancé. My English is better than that of all my old mates combined. If you compare a high school photo of mine with a current one, it's like looking at two entirely different people. I have a job through which my graphics are displayed in store windows all over the nation.
Was I ever even worried about going to my 10 year reunion?
The answer was ranging, btw. I knew that. And not, as you may think, because I spent such a long time in an English speaking country. I knew it because, dude, it's called general knowledge!
