Jeopardizing My Life

My friends and family say that I have a pathological obsession with the show ‘Jeopardy’. Some people can be really mean! This opinion is based on the fact that I have the Jeopardy ring-tone on my cell phone and because I am a card-carrying member of the Jeopardy Junkies Club (and I stood in line to get Ken Jenning's autograph).
I have been to Sony Picture Studios in Los Angeles to watch the taping five times. I would go more often, but they have a sign outside the door with my mug-shot, saying “DO NOT admit this woman!” in large letters. Underneath, it says “Known to act really juvenile, by jumping up and down maniacally, and crying hysterically when it was time to go home.”
So, I have Alex Trebek’s picture up on my bathroom mirror. I just would like to interview him for crying out loud. I have George Clooney for my other, seriously romantic fantasies.
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It is seven o’clock. I am all ready on the couch, remote in hand, eyes glazed and glued to the plasma screen. Unless they are actually spitting blood, or are unconscious, which is a moot point, my children know better than to call me between seven and seven-thirty pm. If some bone-head who cannot follow a simple directive, does call me, I pick up the hand-set, bellow JEOPARDY!! into the phone and slam it down. The reason I pick it up is twofold: I do not want to hear the four rings and the nasally pre-recorded voice answering “No one is at home to take your call….” Besides, if I bellow loud enough, it should scare the dimwit off from trying to piss me off a second time.
In the age of TiVo, I am often asked, why I do not invest in this wonderfully hi-tech DVR contraption. The addiction is not to the show itself - I am forever and indelibly bound to watching it at a specific time. My therapist said it has to do with some timing imbalances in my brain. I just am not able to watch it at any other time.
I once heard my husband telling a friend that he often wishes that his first-born had learned how to say “Papa” first, before she learned how to say “So long, Allekk!” Not being able to tell time, my two-year old would see it getting dark, scoot her little diapered behind on the coffee-table and clap her hands, and shout “Jepdy! Jepdy!” until I turned on the television. This was particularly painful in winter, when it got dark at five and you had to hear “Jepdy! Jepdy!” four million times in a row. This was a gloomy season in my life, and the only time (um, maybe not!) when I have had homicidal feelings. How do you tell a two year old that the show doesn’t start for another two hours, and to please shut the eff up or mother is going to throw the television out of the window and neither you nor I will ever watch Jeopardy again for the rest of our lives.
The worst was the weekends, when Jeopardy did not have reruns. Oh, the shrieking and the clapping and tears! Since I could not put her up for adoption with an “Only on Weekends” clause, I wrote a letter to Alex Trebek, saying that my two year old was getting withdrawal symptoms and to please do something about it. Instead, he just sent an autographed photograph of himself by return mail, inscribed “To Meera, one of my youngest fans”. I was really peeved, not because he didn’t do anything about the weekend airings, but that I didn’t get my own autographed photo.
I have learned to text on my cell phone only to exchange Final Jeopardy answers with my fellow junkies. I memorize facts and trivia if I have the slightest suspicion that it will show up one day on the show. My guests know better than to overstay their welcome around 6.59 pm…
…and
my friends know that one day my name will appear as the answer, when the contestant says, “I’ll take Dorks for $ 100, Alex”.