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Chapter One
It's funny how a single dumb decision made in an unthinking moment of weakness can change the entire course of a person's life.
At thirty-four, I suppose that shouldn't come as any great revelation, especially as life's incredible serendipity is a central theme of much of the world's great literature, some of which I've actually read. It also happens to be a major subtext of the popular TV shows I watched obsessively while growing up, and whose humor and moral lessons still inform my general outlook and thinking — a jam-packed cultural cornucopia of after-school reruns and contemporary evening hits that included such indisputable classics as Green Acres, Bewitched, Happy Days, Three's Company, The Facts of Life, that trusty evergreen I Love Lucy, and my abiding personal Bible, The Brady Bunch.
Yet nothing in the seminal works of either Dostoyevsky or Eva Gabor prepared me — Marcy Lee Mallowitz — for the amazing, if sometimes traumatic, life-transforming rollercoaster ride I unknowingly embarked upon two months ago, when, against my better judgment, I agreed to be my boyfriend's Lifeline.
What is a Lifeline?
In the event you've been living in a cave, or floating on a raft somewhere in the North Atlantic as part of a farsighted scientific experiment testing man's ability to thrive once denied new episodes of Friends, I suppose I should explain.
A Lifeline is one of the clever wrinkles the producers of So You Want to Be Filthy Rich! built into the rules to add a touch of dramato the TV game show, and make it easier to give away the network's money. In other words, it's a gimmick for boosting the ratings, which — for reasons that continue to baffle me — have been stratospheric from the program's inauspicious start a year ago as a summer replacement. Who knew it would become a national phenomenon? A national addiction, really.
But it works. As many as five times a week — or even more frequently if the network's programmers are feeling desperate — zillions of Americans plant their greedy bodies in front of the tube to watch contestants perched precariously on a "hot seat" mounted atop a box of $100 bills field quirky questions for increasing amounts of money.
These questions seem to puddle-jump in no particular pattern from hard to easy, and cover an amazing span of useless, or nearly useless, information — everything from history, geography, and current events to physics and pop culture. The value of the questions keeps escalating, until finally the lucky player is going for the full $1.75 million — an amount calibrated so the show can honestly claim the winner remains a millionaire even after paying taxes. Answer correctly, and it's Easy Street. Answer incorrectly, and the take is a measly seventy-five grand, fake expressions of sympathy from relatives and former friends, and a future of excruciating second-guessing.
This action all takes place inside a circular klieg-lit arena — a knockoff of the set used in the original British version and re-created now in some seventy other countries. Given the demise of the Empire, and Princess Di's tragic death a few years back, I'd wager it's currently Britain's most successful export.
The show is broadcast live from the same New York City studio where Nixon and Kennedy met for one of their famous debates in 1960. The debate is mainly remembered for Nixon's bad sweating problem, which many say cost him the election, and I'm sure some wiseass Ph.D. candidate in history is already preparing a thesis comparing and contrasting Nixon's perspiration on that historic occasion with the flood that surely would have emanated from the forehead of the disgraced former president had he instead been going for the $1.75 million from the Filthy Rich! hot seat.
Under the rules, a stumped contestant is allowed to consult a friend or loved one identified in advance for help in answering a question. This person is the Lifeline.
When all goes well, and the designated Lifeline provides the right answer, the moment becomes a sickeningly giddy bonding experience for the contestant and the helper. When things go awry, however, and the Lifeline turns out to be just as clueless as the contestant, the worst family dynamics can kick in, only to be played out on live national TV to great audience acclaim.
At least, that's what happened to me.
"The Big Brush-Off," as some sage at TV Guide dubbed it in a callously accurate cover story, occurred at precisely 9:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time (8:21 Central), just before the final commercial break of a Tuesday-night episode. During sweeps week no less. If you're a Filthy Rich! fan (and who isn't?), you probably remember the show. It's considered a classic.
My almost fiancé — Neil Postit (pronounced "post it," just like the yellow sticky notepads, as the program's nattily attired master of ceremonies, the genial Kingman Fenimore, matter-of-factly observed) — was on the hot seat. Somehow Mr. 3M, Neil, had made it to the $500,000 mark — astounding guesswork, when you think about it, for a thirty-six-year-old orthodontist for adults who never seemed to read much, except about the latest advances in braces. That meant he had justone more question to answer before either pocketing the whole $1.75 mil and joining the Filthy Rich! pantheon, or bidding an abrupt adieu to a singular chance for fame and riches.
"So," Kingman Fenimore said to Neil, "you've got $500,000. Do you want to stop now and take it home, or are you ready to risk it all and go for the full $1.75 million?"
The large gap between the two top prizes is a perverse strategic ploy to bring out contestants' avarice and make it almost irresistible for them to keep...
