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 3rd 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.
