(Missed any part? Here’s the whole series.)
Picking up from last time –
Once I sit down with my dad, he’s bracing himself for me to be severely disappointed. Surprisingly I’m in a pretty chipper mood.
In the moment, I was thinking I played the game to the best of my ability, with the best strategy I knew for a game involving such chance. I thought I made the technically correct choices. At least I got to play. Getting zonked is kind of fun. So, why be upset?
Of course, this is the dad who watched his daughter run away and hide under a bench when she got silver instead of gold at the math pentathlon in elementary school. It’s the dad who had a daughter who systematically followed a 7-point plan (starting her freshman year) for how to become her high school’s theater president (which she did – [*high five*]).
This is a dad who has a daughter who absolutely hates losing – hates it… and who subscribes to the whole, “If you’re not first you’re last” school of thought. (I so adore that line in Talladega Nights.)
So, he was waiting for the volcano to erupt. I thought it wasn’t going to… But he may have been right. (He has known me for decades, after all.)
After the show, everyone who played a game had to go back to the contestant room to fill out paperwork.
You walk in, and the room has a decoration streamer up with big letters that say, “Congratulations!”
Okay, there, some of us are big losers. No real super need to rub this in our face. But you know, whatever.
There’s a social media guy in there, who grabs a video snippet of some of the bigger winners.
As he looks around the room and asks if anyone else won anything great that he’s forgetting, I echoed the sentiment of, “I said I wanted a trip. I should’ve been more specific.” [ha ha ha]
I was trying to be sort of cute, but I think it must’ve come across as sort of obnoxious, because he very quickly blew past me, looking around for other winners.
I’d piped up ’cause I thought it might be fun to do a cute little zonk video, but I guess they only do them with actual winners. Oh well. They know what the people on instagram want.
After the social media videos were made, we all sat around a bit longer until it was time to be processed.
During the sitting around, I thought it would be like the Price is Right contestant room, where everyone was breaking down their games, what they should’ve said or done differently, and all of that. But no. It wasn’t like that at all.
And this is where I’ll pick up next time.