Watch me choke on JEOPARDY!
When I was 6, I had a wonderful birthday party, with a cake with circus figures, and about 30 other kids, and all kinds of gifts like walkie-talkies and a bicycle.
About a week after that, I was dying……
I wasn’t too healthy to begin with, anyway-one of those skinny kids with a constantly running nose and asthma; I was anemic, had scarring on my lungs, and I’d get tonsil infections if you looked at me cross-eyed, but the mumps were going around that summer, and I got the mumps, which turned into some form of meningitis, and I spent the whole summer in bed, reading and drinking milkshakes-which were basically the only thing I could keep down.
In fact, I spent huge parts-seems like the whole year-of second grade in bed, or shuffling around our apartment in the city, being tutored personally by my teacher, who’d come to the apartment with books and assignments, and watching daytime T.V. All of this actually led to my getting somewhat ahead of my peer group in school, and later skipping a couple of grades, and I’d always liked to be ahead of the curve, anyway-I’d been taught to read at three because I was tired of my mom’s sing-song way of reading aloud, and asked so I could do it myself.
Daytime T.V., though-I watched a lot of Jeopardy-every day. The answers were only worth $10-$50 in the first round, and double that in the second then, and the host was a man named Art Fleming-Alex Trebec was in college in Canada, or working with Peter Jennings.-and I’ve wanted to be on Jeopardy ever since.
Since then I’ve gotten well, of course. Since then, in no particular order, I’ve also earned several degrees, played in a band and studied Judo in Japan, dated a stripper, taught middle and high school when I should have still been in high school myself ,almost summitted Everest (in 1996, a bad year on that mountain….) made love in the back seat of my very own Rolls Royce, sailed the Caribbean and South Pacific, collected and raced cars, raced motorcycles, operated a nuclear power plant, learned to clear rooms and defuse bombs, fallen in love with three truly outstanding women, (and been fortunate enough to have two of them love me back) been married, had kids, been widowed and remarried-gone into Uzbekistan and helped to bring 1500 lbs. of weapons grade uranium into the U.S., boxed in the Golden Gloves (and nearly had my head handed to me), scuba dived on wrecks, and…well, I think I’ve done a lot for someone who wasn’t supposed to make it to 11.
I expect I’ll do more, but Iwon’t be winning on Jeopardy. After 39 years, though, I was finally on it, and you can see me choke big time on this coming Monday…..I guess I’ll kick myself forever for not liking for Robert Frost-my grandmother, who was a Wind River Shoshone and taught me all kinds of hand signs, is probably spinning in her grave; I had to be a little evasive about my job, not wear my pinstripe suit -because Alex wears pinstripes, and well, it’s his show! Since the show was in the morning, I finished up early, and had a really good day at the beach.
I had lots of fun, though….
Aaron J. Cuffee
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
- H.L. Mencken