Knowing is Half the Battle

The pressure is on. Not only am I the first guest blogger on this blog, I am also several days late on delivering my promised tale.  So here goes.  My brother, Kevin, is two years younger than I am.  When we were little, we lived for afternoon cartoons.  If we wanted to watch TV after school, we got one shot.  We did not have Nickelodeon, or Cartoon Network, or Netflix or even a VCR (we did have electricity, barely).  On one of the handful of stations we did receive, there were a few precious hours after school dedicated to cartoons.  For some reason I remember it being channel 20, but that detail is a bit hazy.  At this time in our young lives (I could not have been any older than 3^rd grade, which would have put Kevin in first) one of our favorite shows was G.I. Joe.  As much as I liked it, Kevin liked it more.  He was an avid collector of action figures and anything else he could get his hands on.  I think he is still a little upset at Mom for giving his collection away to a younger cousin.  He had some definite collector’s items.  But I digress.  Part of what we loved about watching G.I. Joe was the TV personality that would introduce each episode, Machine Gun Joe.  Avid watchers, which included us, could enter their name into a drawing.  At the end of the day’s adventure, Machine Gun Joe would select a lucky winner.  He would then call them on the phone, on live TV, and ask who the hero of the day was.  If you knew, you won a gazillion dollars worth of G.I. Joe treasures.  I honestly don’t remember what the grand prize was exactly, but it was really cool.  It kept us watching religiously so that we would always know the hero of the day’s episode so we would be ready when the telephone rang.

As fate would have it, one December afternoon, I decided that decorating the kitchen windows with Christmas decals was a much better idea than watching G.I. Joe.  I was sitting on the kitchen table which was pressed up against the wall under the window.  A little girl my mom babysat was helping me decorate, when the phone rang.  I answered and a voice said, “This is Machine Gun Joe from channel 20.  Can I speak to Amy Walker?”  What?  My mind could not even process what was happening.  Before I knew it he had asked who the hero of the day was, I had told him I did not know, and the conversation was over.  Only after I hung up the phone was I aware of the screams echoing up the stairwell, “It’s Duke!  It’s Duke!”  Duh?  How dumb could I be?!  It’s always Duke.  I could have at least guessed.  Kinda like you always go for answer “C” on the multiple choice tests when you have no clue what the answer is.  When in doubt, choose Duke. Truly, I bet I could count on one hand the number of episodes we watched where the hero was someone else.  I don’t even remember anyone else’s name, besides Scarlet and Destro.  Like they were ever gonna save the day.  Scarlet was the only girl and Destro was the bad guy.

Poor, Kevin.  By the time he realized what was happening, meaning the fact that I wasn’t going to come up with the right answer, it was too late.  Had he started for the stairs when they first called my name, we might have won.  I wish there had been a camera to record his heroic scramble up the stairs trying to save his sister from utter humiliation.  No doubt he was also banking on a hefty share of the winnings.  But he could not save me.  At the school the next day everyone wanted to know why I had not been watching, why I had not at least guessed, why I had not come up with the answer that everyone in the world knew, “DUKE!  THE HERO OF THE DAY IS ALWAYS DUKE!”  (Maybe this is why I have an aversion to a certain ACC team.  Hmmm…)

A few days later, a large manila envelope arrived addressed to me.  Inside was a letter from Machine Gun Joe and two action figures.  Some obscure guy and Destro.  I gave one to Kevin.  It was the least I could do for failing him.  So in the end we each gained something.  He got a new action figure for his collection and I learned a new vocabulary word:  consolation, as in consolation prize, as in here is something to try to help you forget that you are a big loser.  Obviously, I am completely over the humiliation.