It’s Wednesday morning, and my brother Martin and I are walking in a parking lot, toward the spot where a friend and his father are going to pick us up and take us across town to school. The weather isn’t bad, but there’s some leftover “black ice,” which can the treacherous if, instead of wearing real boots with decent treads, you are, like me, sporting a pair of flimsy overshoes that have slightly more traction than a fresh roll of wax paper.
One moment I’m walking along, perfectly fine; the next, I’m on the ground, spouting words that my brother will later swear he had never before heard me utter.
Our ride comes. In the car I notice that my left ankle is swelling. Just a sprain, I think, but the look on my friend’s face (he’s on the basketball team) tells me he’s not so sure.
At school I’m stupid enough to climb two flights of stairs and walk all the way down a hall to my homeroom, where the nun, who unlike me is no fool, immediately notices my limp. My mother is called, and eventually I wind up at home, my ankle in a cast.
Thing is, the following Saturday I’m supposed to appear on a TV quiz show with two classmates. I’m incompetent with crutches, but the cast has a rubber heel that I hope I can get used to.
On the morning of the taping my folks take me to the TV station, which is part of a shopping center. I’m still wobbly on the rubber heel, but my mother has cut a hole for it in a ski hat and placed the hat over the cast, and my father helps me up a tall flight of stairs to the studio.
Eventually I’m sitting on the set with my teammates, a guy and a young woman. Another classmate finds an empty pack of smokes on our desk and kids me about it.
Before the show we tape a promo. When the host botches the name of one of the schools I hear a muttered “Shit!” behind the wall in back of us. So now we know where the control room is.
The show includes several rounds of questions. The questions are long and involved, apparently in the hope of tricking you into answering quickly — and incorrectly.
The final round is like “Jeopardy!” All nine students can press a button, attached to a light, to answer.
Going into the final round, we’re in second place. At one point, the host says something like, “This movie, about a mode of transportation, stars Burt Lancaster — ”
I press the button. “‘The Train’!”
“No,” the host says in his best I’m-making-an-example-of-you voice, “if you’d listened to the entire question, you would have found the answer was ’Airport’!”
So now I’ve put us in third place.
But a little while later my big moment comes, my shining hour, the nerd’s equivalent of the last-second jump shot from halfway across the court that goes into the hoop and wins the game.
“Celebrating her 80th birthday with her 80th book — ”
I stab the button again. “Agatha Christie!”
The host, astonished, confirms I’m right. (Ha! Make an example of me, eh, buster?)
Someone in the audience gasps. A swooning cheerleader, I hope.
We’re back in second place. Then my teammates correctly answer two questions, and when a buzzer signals the end of the game, we’re the come-from-behind winners.
Some weeks later we return for the semifinals, but we’re blown out of the water by an aggressive team from another city who apparently spent the previous night finishing a new translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls while munching on steroids.
Maybe if I’d broken my other ankle that week….
