by Alex Banayan
And this is how I paid him back? By lying in bed, pulling the covers over my head?
I glanced at the other side of the room. My roommate, Ricky, was at a small wooden desk doing his homework, spitting out numbers like an accounting machine. The squeak of his pencil mocked me. He had a path. I wish I had that. All I had was a ceiling that wouldn’t talk back to me.
Then I thought about the guy I’d met the prior weekend. He’d graduated from USC a year earlier with a math degree. He used to sit at a desk just like Ricky’s, spitting out numbers just like him, and now he was scooping ice cream a few miles from campus. I was beginning to realize that a college degree no longer came with guarantees.
I turned over to the textbooks. Studying is the last thing I want to do.
I rolled onto my back. But my parents sacrificed everything so that studying would be the only thing I have to do.
The ceiling remained silent.
I flipped over and planted my face in my pillow.
* * *
I trudged to the library the following morning, my biology books under my arm. But as much as I tried to study, my internal battery remained depleted. I needed a jump start, something to inspire me. So I pushed my chair back from the study tables, wandered to the aisles of the biography section, and pulled out a book on Bill Gates. I figured reading about someone as successful as Gates might spark something within me. And it did—just not what I’d expected.
Here was a guy who started his company when he was my age, grew it into the most valuable corporation in the world, revolutionized an industry, became the richest man alive, and then stepped down as the CEO of Microsoft to become the most generous philanthropist on earth. Thinking about what Bill Gates accomplished felt like standing at the base of Mount Everest and staring up at the peak. All I could wonder was: How did he take his first steps up the mountain?
Before I knew it I was flipping through the biographies of one successful person after another. Steven Spielberg climbed the Mount Everest of directing, so how did he do it? How did a kid who’d been rejected from film school become the youngest major studio director in Hollywood history? How did Lady Gaga, when she was nineteen years old and waiting tables in New York City, get her first record deal?
I kept returning to the library, searching for a book that held the answers. But after a few weeks, I was left empty-handed. There wasn’t a single book that focused on the stage of life I was in. When no one knew their names, when no one would take their meetings, how did these people find a way to launch their careers? That’s when my naive eighteen-year-old thinking kicked in: Well, if no one has written the book I’m dreaming of reading, why not just write it myself?
It was a dumb idea. I couldn’t even write a term paper without half the page coming back covered in red ink. I decided not to do it.
But as the days pressed on, the idea wouldn’t let me go. What interested me wasn’t writing a book so much as embarking on “a mission”—a journey to uncover these answers. I figured if I could just talk to Bill Gates myself, he had to have the Holy Grail of advice.
I ran the idea by my friends and found out I wasn’t the only one staring at the ceiling. They were dying for answers too. What if I go on this mission on behalf of all of us? Why not just call up Bill Gates, interview him, track down some other icons, put what I discover in a book, and share it with my generation?
The hard part, I figured, would be paying for it. Traveling to interview all these people would cost money, money I didn’t have. I was buried in tuition payments and all out of Bar Mitzvah cash. There had to be another way.
* * *
Two nights before fall semester final exams, I was back in the library when I took a break to scroll through Facebook. That’s when I saw a friend’s post about free tickets to The Price Is Right. The game show was filmed a few miles from campus. It’s one of those shows I watched as a kid when I stayed home sick from school. Audience members would get called down to become contestants, they’d be shown a prize, and if they guessed closest to the actual price without going over, they’d win. I’d never seen a full episode before, but how hard could it be?
What if…what if I go on the show to win some money to fund the mission?
It was absurd. The show was taping the next morning. I had to study for finals. But the thought kept crawling back into my mind. To prove to myself it was a horrible idea, I opened my notebook and wrote a list of the best- and worst-case scenarios.
WORST-CASE SCENARIOS
1. Fail my finals
2. Ruin my chances of going to med school
3. Mom will hate me
4. No…Mom will kill me
5. Look fat on TV
6. Everyone will make fun of me
7. Not even make it onto the show
BEST-CASE SCENARIO
1. Win enough money to fund the mission
I searched online to calculate the odds of winning. Out of three hundred people in the audience, one wins. I used my cellphone to do the math: a 0.3 percent chance.
See, this is why I didn’t like math.
I looked at the 0.3 percent on my phone, then at the stack of biology books on my desk. But all I could think was, What if…? It felt as if someone had tied a rope around my gut and was slowly pulling.
I decided to do the logical thing and study.
But I didn’t study for finals. I studied how to hack The Price Is Right.
CHAPTER TWO
The Price Is Right
Anyone who’s watched The Price Is Right for even thirty seconds and has heard the announcer say “COME ON DOWN!” knows the contestants are colorfully dressed and have wild personalities that fill the television screen. The show makes it seem like the contestants are randomly selected from the audience—but at around 4:00 a.m., as I’d Googled “how to get on The Price Is Right,” I discovered it was far from random. A producer interviews each audience member and picks the wildest ones. If the producer likes you, he puts your name on a list that’s given to an undercover producer who observes you from afar. If the undercover producer puts a check mark by your name, you’re called on stage. It wasn’t luck: there was a system.
The next morning, I swung open my closet and threw on my brightest red shirt, a big puffy jacket, and neon-yellow sunglasses. I pretty much looked like a chubby toucan. Perfect. After driving to the CBS studio, I pulled into the parking lot and approached the check-in table. Because I couldn’t tell who the undercover producer was, I assumed it could be anyone. I hugged security guards, danced with janitors, flirted with old ladies—I break-danced, and I don’t know how to break-dance.
I got in line with the other audience members in a maze of railings outside the studio doors. The line moved forward, until finally, it was almost my turn to be interviewed. There’s my guy. I’d spent hours researching him the night before. His name was Stan and he was the producer in charge of casting contestants. I knew where he was from, where he went to school—and that he relied on a clipboard, but it was never in his hands. His assistant, who sat in a chair behind him, held it. When Stan selected a contestant, he would turn to her, wink, and she’d write the name down.
An usher motioned for ten of us to step forward. Stan stood ten feet away, walking from one person to the next. “What’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do?” There was a rhythm to his moves. Officially, Stan was a producer; but in my eyes, he was the bouncer. If I didn’t get my name on his clipboard, I wouldn’t get on the show. And now the bouncer was right in front of me.
“Hey, my name’s Alex, I’m from LA and I’m a premed at USC!”
“Premed? You’re probably always studying. How do you have time to watch The Price Is Right?”
“The…what? Oh! Is that where I am?”
He didn’t even give a pity laugh.
I needed
to redeem myself. In one of the business books I’d read, the author said that physical contact speeds up a relationship. I had an idea.
I had to touch Stan.
“Stan, Stan, come over here! I want to make a secret handshake with you!”
He rolled his eyes.
“Stan! Come on!”
He stepped forward and we slapped hands. “Dude, you’re doing it all wrong,” I said. “How old are you?”
Stan chuckled and I showed him how to pound it and blow it up. He laughed some more, wished me luck, and walked away. He didn’t wink to his assistant. She didn’t write anything on the clipboard. Just like that, it was over.
This was one of those moments when you see your dream in front of you, you can almost touch it, and then just like that, it’s gone, slipping through your fingers like sand. And the worst part is you know you could’ve seized it if you just had another chance. I don’t know what got into me, but I started shouting, at the top of my lungs.
“STAN! STAAAAN!”
The entire audience whipped their heads around.
“STAAAAAAAAAN! Come back!”
Stan ran over and nodded slowly, giving me that “all right, kid, what now?” look.
“Uh…uh…”
I scanned him up and down: he was wearing a black turtleneck, jeans, and a plain red scarf. I didn’t know what to say.
“Uh……uh……….. YOUR SCARF!”
He squinted. Now I really didn’t know what to say.
I took a big breath, looked at him with every bit of intensity I could muster, and said, “STAN, I’M AN AVID SCARF COLLECTOR, I HAVE 362 OF THEM IN MY DORM ROOM, AND I’M MISSING THAT ONE! WHERE DID YOU GET IT?”
The tension shattered and Stan burst into laughter. It was as if he knew what I was really doing, and he was laughing less at what I said than why I said it.
“Oh, in that case, you can have my scarf!” he joked, taking it off and offering it to me.
“No, no, no,” I said. “I just wanted to know where you got it!”
He flashed a smile and turned to his assistant. She scribbled something on the clipboard.
* * *
I stood outside the studio doors and waited for them to open. A young woman walked by and I noticed she was looking around, staring at people’s nametags. A laminated badge peeked out of her back pocket. She had to be the undercover producer.
Locking eyes with her, I made funny faces and blew her some kisses. She started to laugh. Then I did the 1980s sprinkler dance move and she laughed more. She looked at my nametag, slipped a sheet of paper out of her pocket, and made a note.
I should’ve felt on top of the world, but that’s when I realized I’d spent my all-nighter figuring out how to get on the show—I still didn’t know how to play. I took out my phone and Googled “how to play The Price Is Right.” Thirty seconds later, a security guard snatched my phone from my hand.
I looked around and saw security was taking everyone’s phone away. After passing through metal detectors, I plopped down on a bench. Without my phone, I felt unarmed. An old, gray-haired woman sitting beside me asked what was wrong.
“I know this sounds crazy,” I told her, “but I had this idea to come here and win some money to fund my dream, but I’ve never seen a full episode of the show before, and now they’ve taken my phone, so I don’t have a way to figure out how the show works, and—”
“Oh, honey,” she said, pinching my cheek. “I’ve been watching this show for forty years.”
I asked for advice.
“Sweetie, you remind me of my grandson.”
She leaned in and whispered, “Always underbid.” She explained that if you overbid by even a dollar, you lose. If you underbid by $10,000, you still have a chance. As she continued, I felt like I was downloading decades of experience into my head. That’s when the light bulb went off.
I thanked her, turned to the guy on my left, and said, “Hey, my name is Alex, I’m eighteen, and I’ve never seen a full episode of the show before. Do you have any advice?” Then I turned to another person. Then to a group of people. I jumped throughout the crowd and spoke to almost half the audience, crowdsourcing their wisdom.
The doors to the set finally swung open. I stepped in and the place smelled like the 1970s. Turquoise and yellow drapes flowed down the walls. Gold and green flashing light bulbs danced between them. Psychedelic flowers were painted on the back wall. All that was missing was a disco ball.
Theme music began to play and I took my seat. I stuffed my jacket and yellow sunglasses under the chair. To hell with the toucan—it was game time.
If there was ever a time to pray, it was now. I dropped my head, closed my eyes, and put a hand over my face. Then I heard a deep, rumbling voice from above. Every syllable was elongated. The voice got louder and louder. But this wasn’t God. It was TV God.
“HERRRRE IT COMES, FROM THE BOB BARKER STUDIO AT CBS IN HOLLYWOOD, IT’S THE PRICE IS RIGHT!…AND NOWWWWW, HERE’S YOUR HOST, DREW CAREY!”
TV God called down the first four contestants. I wasn’t the first, second, or third, but for the fourth, I felt it coming. I inched forward in my chair, and…it wasn’t me.
The four contestants stood at flashing podiums. A woman wearing mom jeans won the opening round. She advanced to a bonus round. Four minutes into the show, a fifth contestant was called to fill Mom Jeans’ vacant podium.
“ALEX BANAYAN, COME ON DOWN!”
I leapt out of my seat and the crowd exploded along with me. As I flew down the stairs slapping high fives, it felt like the audience was my extended family and all my cousins were in on the joke—they knew I had no idea what I was doing and they were loving every second of it. I got to my podium without a second to breathe and Drew Carey said, “Next prize, please.”
“A CONTEMPORARY LEATHER CHAIR AND OTTOMAN!”
“Go ahead, Alex.”
Underbid. Underbid.
“Six hundred!”
The audience laughed and the other contestants bid next. The actual retail price: $1,661. The winner was a young woman who jumped up and hollered. Nearly everyone who’s been to a bar on a college campus has seen someone like her: the Woo Girl. She’s the one slamming back tequila shots and shouting “WOOOOOOO!” after each one.
Woo Girl played her bonus game and then it was time for the next round.
“A BILLIARDS TABLE!”
My cousins have a pool table. How expensive could it be?
“Eight hundred dollars!” I said.
The other contestants bid higher and higher. Drew revealed the retail price: $1,100. The other contestants had all overbid.
“Alex!” Drew said. “Come on up here!”
I raced up to the stage. Drew glanced at the USC logo on my red shirt. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “You go to USC? What do you study there?”
“Business administration,” I said without thought. It was half true: I was also studying business administration. But why did I choose not to mention premed when put on the spot on national television? Perhaps I knew myself more deeply than I wanted to admit. But I didn’t have time to notice, because TV God was already revealing the prize for my bonus round.
“A NEW SPA!”
It was a hot tub with LED lights, a waterfall, and lounge seating for six. For a college freshman, this was gold. How it would fit in my dorm room? I had no idea.
I was shown eight prices. If I picked correctly, the hot tub was mine. I guessed $4,912. The actual retail price…$9,878.
“Alex, at least you’ve got a pool table,” Drew said. He looked into the camera. “Don’t go away. We’re going to spin the Wheel!”
The show cut to commercial break. Production assistants carted a fifteen-foot wheel onto the stage, which looked like a giant slot machine covered with glitter and flashing lights.
&
nbsp; “Uh, excuse me,” I said, turning to one of the assistants. “Sorry, quick question. Who spins the Wheel?”
“Who spins? You spin.”
He explained that the three of us who’d won opening rounds would spin the Wheel. There were twenty numbers on it: every multiple of five, up to one hundred. Whoever landed the highest number would move on to the final round. If someone spun a perfect one hundred, he or she would win an extra cash prize.
The theme music started and I ran to my position between Mom Jeans and Woo Girl. Drew Carey stepped over and lifted his microphone.
“Welcome back!”
Mom Jeans went first. She stepped forward, grabbed the Wheel, and…TICK, TICK, TICK…eighty. The audience let out a cheer and even I knew that was an unbelievable spin.
I inched forward, gripped the handle of the Wheel, and pulled down…TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK…eighty-five! The crowd erupted and the commotion was so loud it might as well have shaken the ceiling.
Woo Girl stepped forward, spun, and…fifty-five. I was about to celebrate but I noticed the audience was quiet. Drew Carey was giving her another chance to spin. I learned that this was like blackjack. She could hit again, and if her numbers added up to a higher total than mine, without going over one hundred, she would win. She spun once more and…another fifty-five.
“Alex!” Drew exclaimed. “You’re on your way to the Showcase! More Price Is Right is coming up.”