Aurora's Blog

Picking up from yesterday –

Oh goodness, time to talk about the wheel.

During the commercial break, Drew came over and looked each one of us on the eye as he moved down the line and said, “good luck” to us individually.

I was in the coveted 3rd spot. It’s obviously the best spot to be in, ’cause you don’t have to weigh whether it’s smart to spin again. You know exactly what you have to beat.

Now, the first girl went over. And the second girl – I don’t know if you noticed, but had it been one above or one below, she would’ve gone over as well. I don’t want to wish anyone ill will, but selfishly, I was kind of hoping to be in the showcase. (I mean, who doesn’t want to go to the showcase?)

When I went to spin the wheel, I had way too many thoughts spinning through my head. (That’s actually a true statement for pretty much anything I did the whole time I was there.) First, I looked at it. “Have those handles always been metal? I thought they were wood… Why would they be wood?”

And I’m trying so hard to picture anytime I’ve seen The Price is Right wheel before, and really focus in on those handles. “Wait. Why am I trying to picture the wheel and care about this? You know you need to spin this right?”

I’ve actually had my wheel strategy forever. It’s something you really can’t prepare for (whereas you could kind of study prizes). But, I knew if I got on there, I wanted to start low and wind up for momentum.

In my head: “You want to wind up 3 spots since 3’s you’re lucky number. Oh my gosh. You’ve wound up 3 spots, but your hands aren’t above your head enough. Are you going to have enough momentum to do this? You can’t very well go past your lucky number of 3 wind up places. But you can’t very well move your hands now. Is that cheating? Are you allowed to wind up, move hand spots and spin? I bet not. I can’t very well ask now. Look where I am. Just spin it already.”

And I do.

When you watch the tape, you can actually almost see my trip a little and judge my spin. It’s all over my face.

(I had this little fear as I spun – whatever you do Aurora, don’t slip! Don’t fall under the wheel. Every embarrassing wheel spinning I’ve seen flashed before my eyes. The carpet wasn’t even that slippery. So, what kind of shoes are these people wearing that make them fall? Nonetheless, I was too worried about falling.)

“Oh my gosh, Aurora. That was weak. Weak! Is it even gonna go all the way around?”

When Drew asked if I wanted to say hi to anybody, I thought I might not even have time to say anything with my weak spin.

Before the show, my little group had been talking about, “What will we say in the mic if we say hi to someone?” Patrick had this brilliant idea to say hi to someone from twitter.

There was a little part of me that wanted to say “@DamonLindelof, @KenJennings, I love your twitter feeds!” or maybe “@jessetyler (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), @CoryBooker, will you be my friend?”

But, I decided against that, ’cause 1) Someday when Patrick is on The Price is Right, what will he do if I’ve already stolen his idea? 2) Who wants to watch someone say hello to famous people? 3) They make it super clear you are absolutely not allowed to plug anything on the show. So, what if I’m accidentally plugging twitter (or those famous people)?

I decided in my seat during the 3rd game that I’d just tell people to believe in themselves. Yes, it was unbelievably cheesy. But, if you only get however many seconds with a microphone on TV, you should probably use it to say something, right? I mean, I say hi to my dad everyday. (And you know if you say hi to someone, you’re gonna end up leaving someone else out. It’s easier to just not rank the people in my life by “Who gets a Price is Right hi?”) There have to be better things to say in my Price is Right moment.

And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.