*spoiler alert*
I love watching part of The Price is Right when I eat breakfast every morning. (That’s not the spoiler, by the way.)
This morning, I literally almost cried for the woman. So, it’s Dream Car week on TPiR. She was playing for a Porsche – a car worth over $90,000!
She was playing this game called Temptation. I don’t know if you watch Price is Right. But in the game Temptation, they bring out 4 prizes that are just yours to keep if you so choose. In each of those prizes there are only two distinct numbers. (Example: something worth $2112.) You choose from those two numbers which one goes in the next number of the price of the car.
The temptation of the game is that you can just take your prizes and call it a day, or play for the car. If you choose to play for the car and you get it, then you also get your prizes. But if you miss any numbers, you lose everything.
On a normal day with a normal car, to me, it seems like it’s all about what the prizes are. Generally, they only total about $4,000. So, I think most of the time it’s worth it to try to go for the car. But every once in a while, you’ll get all pretty useful and cool stuff (like cash, a new bicycle, and some iPads). When loot like that comes up, I’m sort of like, “eh. Enjoy your stuff. The chances of randomly picking these somewhat arbitrary numbers of the car aren’t excellent.”
But when a Porsche is on the line(!) In the words of Michael Jackson, cha’ mone, man. Cha’ mone!
The prizes weren’t even that great. It was like $2,000 in cash, a karaoke machine, a crappy non-Mac laptop and something else that obviously isn’t even memorable. Who wants that crap? What are you going to do with that laptop?!
But the sweet older woman was like, “Drew, I’ve been watching this show forever. I’m so happy to be here. I want to go home with something. I’m taking the prizes.”
He tried to convince her. “You sure you want to just take $4,000 worth of prizes and not go for the $90,000 car?”
She turned to the audience. Of course everyone was screaming at her to go for the car. But she played it safe…
I was in disbelief. Before, I’d been rooting for all of her numbers to be right so she could win. But now I was hoping beyond hope that at least one was wrong – otherwise this would be devastating.
As he revealed each correct number, the audience response got bigger and bigger. (My response did too at home. My mouth got wider and my back got stiffer with each one.) Finally, there was only one more number to be revealed. And she had it RIGHT!
I literally screamed because I could not even believe it in that moment. She had tears welling in her eyes. It was AWFUL. So very, very awful…