Old Dog. New Tricks?

Have I blogged about my reality show experience yet? Well now I have. There, I said it. I was part of a reality show. It was a fashion make-over show where they tried to clean up my sorry excuse for a wardrobe. I'd love to say that it had limited humiliation, but it hasn't aired yet, so who knows.

It can't be worse than the time I was at the show, Ayanla. One minute, I was an innocent audience memeber and the next, I'm on stage with some PA's running around with a mic. A voice comes over the intercom and says "Put the mic on the girl in the middle...the girl in the blue..." Then she got frustrated and just said it. "THE WHITE GIRL! Put the mic on the WHITE GIRL!" I turned even whiter, when on national TV, during the ‘What You Can Do To Make Yourself Feel Special’ speech, Ayanla told me that I needed to get laid. I think she said it just like that too, “Girl, you gotta get laid.”

I was offended. She didn’t know me. I could have just had a morning romp with a stranger in the Starbuck’s bathroom for all she knew. Maybe I just had my way with a PA in a broom closet.

Or maybe, just maybe, I was dressing poorly. Maybe I was dressing like someone who doesn't get laid. Or maybe it was the haircut. My husband once found an old photo of me and looked at it and said, "You weren't dating anyone when this photo was taken." And I was all, "I don't know, I can't remember." And he said, "Men don't date that haircut."

Then after the show aired, I got the phone call. The “I’m pretty sure this wasn’t you, but I’ve got to ask” phone call. Apparently, my high school voice teacher saw the show. People that know me well, stop the story right here in disbelief. Not that I was told by a complete stranger on national TV to ho myself around, not that I was whited out in a room full of ethnic people, but that my tone-deaf ass actually took voice lessons.

It’s true. A sweet, albeit sadistic, woman sat through hours of my trying to hit a note in the song, “Some say love…it is a river…that drowns…the tender reed…” But I digress, back to last weeks reality show...

I had to sign a release to do this show. I signed a legal document acknowledging that I might be embarrassed or humiliated. Clearly I've made a fool out of myself plenty of times, but it's never been premeditated or legally binding!

So post reality show, I got all dolled up in my new duds, a new white shirt, cool tight belt, new necklace, some sweet stilettos and I admit, I was feeling pretty sassy.

By 9 am I had spilled lipstick and tea on my new shirt and fallen down in the subway. Not an "Oh MY God!" fall where people rushed to my side, but more of a Gumby fall, where one leg slid one way and one the other way and people just tilted their heads and looked at me like, "Huh. I wonder how that happened."

Then I spent the whole day in my stained but sassy attire, getting certified for CPR, the defibrillator and first Aid. What I learned after a whole day of training is that you do not want me around in the event of an emergency! I was worried when the guy on the video "fell" down a flight of stairs with boxes and clipped an old lady, I got teary-eyed during the stoke symptom re-enactment, light headed when they talked about chest compresses, and I about fell out of my chair when they showed how to wrap a wounded arm without taking the giant shard of bloody glass out first.

After spending a day thinking about all the potential dangers of this world, the new 4 inch black leather stilettos that I had adored, all of a sudden, seemed risky. Like hang gliding home from work, or bungee jumping down from my 16th floor office window.

So I changed into my nappy old black loafers and headed home, stained and safe.

You can dress an old dog up in a new sweater, but she’ll still step in the same puddles.