I've Never Been to Vegas, but My Luggage Has: Mishaps and Miracles on the Road to Happily Ever After

by Hale, Mandy

After a few months of working as the mall’s “marketing rep,” I quickly realized the only skill I was going to be learning on this career path was the bunny hop. It was time to look elsewhere.

  Responding to an ad in the paper for a “Guest Services Ambassador” at Walmart felt like a solid next move—until I arrived for the interview and was promptly handed a red and green sparkly costume and shoes with pointy toes. They barely blew through a few questions before they pronounced me a perfect fit for the position of . . . elf.

  Elf?

  The job had been just a tad falsely advertised and wasn’t even, in fact, a position at Walmart. It was a company that rented space within Walmart to operate a “workshop” where kids could come and purchase inexpensive Christmas presents for family members. The “elves” were responsible for helping the kids shop and wrapping the gifts. As much as I loved children, I had visions of the disastrous Easter Bunny episode on replay in my head. Not to mention that as a recent college grad, I was humiliated at the thought of being seen at the most public place in town—Walmart—dressed like something from the Island of Misfit Toys. But still, I needed the job to finance my own Christmas shopping, and I couldn’t exactly be picky at this point. So I donned the costume, the workshop manager dubbed me Sparkles the Elf, and I wondered if God was trying to tell me that I had missed my calling in life as a Disney character.

  Every day I slunk into work with my elf costume hidden away in my backpack, thinking that if I could just get into the workshop without being spotted, I could pull my elf hat down far enough over my eyes that no one passing by would recognize me.

  That worked out great for a little while. Until the day I arrived at work to discover a film crew waiting for me.

  A local talk show, Talk of the Town, was on the scene to do a feature story on the workshop, and my manager had decided that Sparkles the Elf would make the perfect interview subject. The show aired a couple of days later, and the phone calls didn’t stop for a week afterward. My first fifteen minutes of fame out of college, and I was wearing green tights that jingled when I walked.

  Real world: 2. Mandy: 0.

  I kept applying and applying for TV jobs in Nashville, and to my frustration, I was getting absolutely no responses. It didn’t help that my parents kept giving me lectures about how I needed to “get my head out of the clouds” and look for a “real job.”

  “You have bills to pay, Mandy,” they said. “Working in television just isn’t realistic. It’s time to make some more practical career decisions.”

  I know my parents were worried about me and just wanted to see me find a career path that would be solid, steady, and successful. I know they were only trying to look out for me and protect me from disappointment. Still, their doubt, pragmatism, and logical arguments only fueled a fire in me to go after my dreams that much harder.

  Finally, a month or so after my elf stint ended, I came across a listing in the paper for a leasing consultant at a local apartment complex. The money wasn’t great, but it was enough, and surely working at an apartment complex couldn’t involve any sort of character dress up, right?

  I thrived at the job, getting along great with the apartment staff and forming fast friendships with both my manager and our residents. I helped brainstorm new marketing ideas, kept the apartment office decorated according to season, and designed cute promotional campaigns to target new residents. I still kept up the hustle, sending in resumes for jobs more suited to my major, but I finally felt as though I had found a solid, grown-up, postcollege job.

  Then one day I walked into work to find my manager unwrapping a giant box.

  “What’s that?” I asked, peering over her shoulder.

  She grinned slyly. “It’s a new marketing tool that I thought you could help implement!” She opened the box with a flourish, and I looked inside to find a giant wizard head and costume staring up at me.

  Oh no.

  “What?!” I yelped. “What does a wizard costume have to do with our apartment complex?”

  She reached underneath the costume and whipped out a bright yellow sign, which she brandished in front of me dramatically. The sign read, “Magical Move-In Specials!”

  Three days later I was posted out front of the apartment complex, right on the edge of the road, peering through a small window in the wizard’s mouth and waving the “Magical Move-In Specials” sign at cars as they whizzed by. Which wouldn’t have been that bad, except humidity was setting in early that year, and the costume added about thirty degrees to the already almost eighty-degree temperature. I was dripping sweat and looked like a poor man’s Gandalf the Grey. It was not a proud moment.

  Real world: 3. Mandy: 0

  After this latest career humiliation, I decided it was time for a vacation. One of my best friends Jennifer and I had developed an obsession with the WB show Dawson’s Creek a couple of years prior. The idealistic beauty of the teenage soap had become even more beloved to me as I navigated the uncertain waters of postcollege life. The show was about a high-school-aged-turned-college-aged boy from fictional Capeside, Massachusetts, who wanted to be a filmmaker, and it served as my much-needed weekly dose of inspiration.

  Jennifer and I got so caught up in the show that when we discovered it was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, a mere eleven-hour drive away from us, we knew instantly what was in our very near future: Road trip!

  In spring 2003, we packed up my little red Ford and set out for Outer Banks, North Carolina, with my video camera in tow to document the entire experience. This was the last season of the show, and we knew it was now or never if we had any hope of catching a glimpse of the cast or the locations where the show was filmed.

  I can remember whooping with joy as we crossed the big bridge over the Cape Fear River that led into Wilmington twelve hours after we left home. We were finally there, in Capeside, the fictional town we had fallen madly in love with! Immediately we started to recognize the scenery, pointing excitedly at landmarks we knew from the show.

  Over the next two days, we gleefully toured the town, searching for landmarks, walking on the beach, touring Screen Gems Studios (where we actually got to step onto the set of Dawson’s Creek, right into Dawson’s living room!), and once even spotted the crew in town filming a scene with Katie Holmes and Oliver Hudson. We feverishly snapped photos and shot footage of every square inch of the town of Wilmington. We were even lucky enough to meet a man at a little ice-cream shop on the boardwalk who gave us very specific instructions on how to find several of the private residences that were used as the exteriors for the various characters’ homes on the show. The first one we tracked down, Katie Holmes’s character Joey Potter’s house, also known as Potter’s Bed & Breakfast, was not occupied, meaning we could pose for pics in front of the house, sit at the end of Joey’s dock with our feet in the creek, and even peek in the windows. Somebody up there was watching out for us!

  Later that day we followed the ice-cream shopkeeper’s directions to two houses that were very much off the beaten path, which served as the exteriors for Dawson Leery’s (James Van Der Beek) and Jen Lindley’s (Michelle Williams) houses. These houses we were particular eager to see, since Dawson’s house was the real centerpiece of the show. When our car reached the gravel path that allegedly led up to the houses, our plans were quickly derailed by two giant and rather unwelcoming Keep Out and No Trespassing signs.

  “What do we do?” I whispered to Jennifer, as if the people in the houses could hear us. “It would be a shame to turn back now, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Jennifer said. “We don’t want to get arrested. I have a test on Monday!”

  We looked at each other for a long moment, considering our options.

  Finally, my voice shaking a bit, I said, “Let’s just go for it!”

  When we were two-thirds of the way up the gravel path, the houses suddenly came into focus. There, looming before us in all their majestic beauty, were Dawson’s and Jen’s houses! We started shrieking and boun
cing up and down in our seats, oblivious to the fact that we were in a very pristine and quiet environment, the window was still rolled down, and these were clearly very private and very much lived-in residences.

  Before we could go any farther, the door to one of the houses suddenly flew open, and a woman stepped out onto the front porch. We stopped in mid-shriek and looked at each other in panic. What to do? Not wasting a second, Jennifer slammed her foot down on the gas pedal as hard as she could and started peeling down the driveway. Backward. Did I mention it was a really long driveway? Gravel flew right and left, and squirrels on the path dove out of the way as Jennifer barreled on. Seconds later we shot back out onto the main road, both of us deathly quiet. It was only after we were safely a few miles away that we both started giggling.

  “Well, I guess we won’t be touring Jen’s and Dawson’s houses!” She laughed.

  “I guess not!” I replied, wiping the tears from my eyes. “Unless we plan on touring the Wilmington jail immediately afterward!”

  We consoled ourselves that night with a trip to Dunkin’ Donuts. But even after almost getting caught trespassing and shooting away from the scene like Thelma and Louise, we still felt something calling us back to those houses. The next day was Sunday, and we were leaving. Since the pinnacle of our Dawson’s Creek tour was seeing and snapping pictures of those two houses, we decided we would try again on our way out of town.

  The next day we packed up our car and joined hands to say a prayer. “Dear God,” we said, “we know that You’re very busy and You probably have much more important things to be dealing with than our quest to see Dawson Leery’s house. But still, we truly believe that You want us to come to You with anything. So here we are, two or more gathered together in agreement in Your name, and we are asking You to please help us find favor with someone at those houses. That is all we ask. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  Our faith and confidence buoyed, we headed out to try again.

  We were just approaching the long gravel drive with the Keep Out signs when we noticed, coming toward us from the direction of the houses, a man on a bicycle flanked by two young girls also on bicycles. “Oh no! What do we do?” I hissed at Jennifer in panic.

  “Just keep going,” she urged. “Maybe he’s the one who lives there! This might be our chance!”

  I kept easing slowly up the driveway, until the man and the two young girls were within a few feet of us. I rolled down my window and leaned out.

  “Hello!” he called brightly to us.

  “Hello!” I replied.

  “What are you girls doing?” the man asked, drawing closer and peering in our window. The two little girls stayed behind him, whispering and giggling to each other.

  I looked over at Jennifer.

  “Well, we came to Wilmington to see the locations where Dawson’s Creek is filmed,” I began. “And we’ve been told that the homes used for exterior shots are down this path and were hoping to snap a few pictures.”

  The man’s face softened.

  “Well, these are the right houses, but I’m afraid they’re private property,” he said.

  My spirits sagged. “Oh, okay. Well, we were just headed back to Tennessee and were hoping to catch a glimpse of the houses before we left town. But—”

  “If you’d like to go down and turn around farther up the drive so you can see the houses up close, you’re welcome to do that,” the man said kindly. “But then I’m afraid you’ll need to leave.”

  Jennifer piped up. “We understand,” she said. “Thank you anyway.”

  The man and two girls started peddling slowly away, and feeling deflated, we did as we were instructed. We did manage to catch one more glimpse of the homes as we turned the car around and headed back up the path.

  “Well, we gave it a shot,” I reasoned.

  Jennifer nodded in agreement. “Yes, and we . . .” She trailed off as we neared the end of the driveway. “Mandy, look.”

  I followed her gaze to the end of the path where the man and two young girls were waiting for us. What in the world was going on? He motioned for me to roll my window down again.

  “Ladies, did you really come all the way from Tennessee just to see sights from Dawson’s Creek?” he asked.

  Hmm. This was an odd question.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “We’re headed back right now.”

  He paused and looked us over one more time before reaching into his back pocket to pull out a business card.

  “Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways.” He chuckled. “I’m Mark Fincannon, the casting director for Dawson’s Creek.” He handed his business card to me through the window as Jennifer and I sat there with our jaws dropped far enough for a 757 to pass through them.

  “And if you ladies could stick around for another day or two,” he continued, “I can get you on as extras on the show.”

  A few phone calls and a little while later, we were ushered right into the casting offices on the Screen Gems lot to fill out some paperwork and get directions to the next day’s filming location. The entire time we both kept pinching ourselves, expecting to wake up at any moment. Though I was due back at work the next day and Jennifer had a test, we both made some calls and shuffled some things around so we could stay and film the show. I could hardly believe it. My lifelong passion for film and television production was paying off in a big way!

  At seven the next morning, we showed up to the extras holding location on Princess Street in downtown Wilmington. We had absolutely no idea what to expect, and just assumed we would be part of a background or crowd scene. “We’ll probably wind up on the cutting-room floor!” I giggled to Jennifer. But no, Mr. Fincannon had gone above and beyond to make our filming experience as memorable as possible, and we were stunned to be handed waitress costumes to change into upon our arrival on set.

  “Ladies, there’s a bathroom down the hall. You can change in there,” a production assistant with a headset instructed us.

  As soon as we entered the bathroom, we started jumping up and down like we were on pogo sticks, screaming silently so as not to alert anyone to our silly, fan-girl behavior. We held the waitress costumes up in the mirror, looking them over in awe. We were going to be waitresses at the fictional pub where the gang hung out on the show! How on earth did we get here?

  What followed was one of the most amazing days of my life. We filmed for more than sixteen hours, getting to watch and be in several scenes with Katie Holmes and Oliver Hudson. Kerr Smith, who played Jack on the show, was also directing the episode. It was like we had stumbled directly into our wildest dreams. And though we only got paid minimum wage and just saw quick flashes of ourselves on-screen when the episode aired a month later, the experience was life-changing for me. We were immortalized on-screen on our all-time favorite TV show. How many people get to say that? I went to Wilmington to escape the reality of my disappointing postcollege career path, which seemed to be wandering further and further away from where I wanted to be. And six days later when I left, I had renewed faith in God and His divine order and plan for my life. And renewed faith in myself.

  Now, I know what you might be thinking. Why would God in all His infinite power and wisdom really care about such frivolous things as helping two girls get on a TV show? I think the reason is quite simple. He heard our prayer. He saw two naive, hopeful, young girls with huge amounts of faith asking Him to help make a small and simple dream come true. Nothing petitions the Lord on our behalf as much as unwavering faith and unfailing hope, and we had come to Him with both.

  I also came to Him a little beaten up. The real world since college hadn’t quite been what I was expecting, and I think maybe He recognized that I needed a little bit of a miracle. What happened in Wilmington gave me the push I needed to go back to Tennessee and secure my first real job in television. I can honestly say, more than a decade later, that Mr. Fincannon’s kindness restored my belief in the industry and in my ability to succeed in it. Everything that unfolded afterward
was another step toward my destiny. I like to jokingly tell people now that the Easter Bunny, the elf, and the wizard were all part of my “character work” in preparation for my big debut on Dawson’s Creek.

  One more reason for thinking God helped conspire to place us as extras on Dawson’s Creek: like a proud papa, I think He sometimes does things for no other reason than to make His children smile.

  The Lord works in mysterious ways, as Mr. Fincannon said.

  When we left Wilmington the day after we wrapped shooting, the scoreboard was a little more even.

  Real world: 3. Mandy: 1.

  Chapter 6

  Earning My Wings

  A few days after we got back from Wilmington, I was running errands when I ran into my former college advisor, Dr. Thomas Berg, at the post office. I hadn’t seen him since graduation, so it was a pleasant surprise. It also turned out to be another divine appointment.

  “Hey, Dr. B! How are you?”

  “Hey, Mandy! It’s great to see you!” Dr. Berg shifted some boxes to one arm so he could give me a hug. “How goes the job search?”

  “I’m still sending in resumes. Something’s going to break sooner or later!”

  Dr. Berg paused for a moment. “You know, I heard that Channel 4 is looking for associate producers. Or is it Channel 2?”

  I looked at him excitedly. “Really? I hadn’t heard that!”

  He pulled out his BlackBerry. “Wait, let’s see, yep, it’s Channel 2. You should send in a resume. Use me as a reference.”

  “Perfect.” I grinned. “Thanks, Dr. B. This is awesome!” I slid my letters into the mail slot and waved good-bye. “I’ll let you know how it goes!”

  Two weeks later I was sitting in front of the news director at News 2, WKRN in Nashville. He was a large man, and rather intimidating.

  “So, local news, huh? You sure about that?” he grunted.

  “Oh, yes, sir!” I replied eagerly. “It’s my dream to one day be a reporter.”

  “You don’t say?” he asked, peering back down at my resume. “Well, let’s have you do a writing test and see what we’ve got.”